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LITTLE BOOKS ON ART
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SUBJECTS

MINIATURES. Atice CorKRAN
BOOKPLATES. E. Atmack

GREEK ART. H. B. Watters
ROMAN ART. H. B. Watters

THE ARTS OF JAPAN. Mrs. C. M. Satwey
JEWELLERY. C. Davenrort
CHRIST IN ART. Mrs. H. JENNER
OUR LADY IN ART. Mrs, H. JENNER
CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. H. JENNER
ILLUMINATED MSS. J. W. BrapLey
ENAMELS. Mrs. Netson Dawson
FURNITURE. Ecan Mew

ARTISTS

ROMNEY. GeEorcE Paston

DURER. L. Jesste ALLEN

REYNOLDS. J. Sime

WATTS. Miss R. E. D, SkETCHLEY

HOPPNER. H. P. K. Sxipron

TURNER. Frances TyrELL-GILL

HOGARTH. Ecan Mew

BURNE-JONES. Fortunte De LIsLte
LEIGHTON. A ice CorKRAN

REMBRANDT. Mrs. E. A. SHARP

VELASQUEZ. Witrrip Witperrorce and A. R, GILBERT
VANDYCK. Muss M, G. SMaLLtwoop

DAVID COX. ArtrHuUR Tomson

HOLBEIN. Mrs. G. Fortescue

COROT. Eruet Brrnstinct and Mrs. A. Pottarp
MILLET. Nerta Peacock

CLAUDE. E. Ditton

GREUZE AND BOUCHER. Etiza F. Pottarp
RAPHAEL, A. R. Drynurstr

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Seid Leighton

FREDERIC LEIGHTON

BY

ALICE CORKRAN

WITH THIRTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1904

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
BOYHOOD

The painter's family—Influence of his father—Gift for drawing shown
at an early age—IIIness—Mrs. Leighton—Travels on the Continent
—Return to England—Death of his grandfather—Family go to
Germany and to Italy — Father’s perplexities— Hiram Power’s

verdict . 6 6 ns A . paget

CHAPTER II
STUDENT DAYS

At the Academy of Florence—Knowledge of anatomy—In Frankfort—
“The Nazarenes”—At Brussels—‘‘ Giotto sehnsucht’’—Paris and
the Louvre—Parallelism between Leighton and Correggio—Steinle
—Festival at Darmstadt—His first etching—Affection for Steinle

CHAPTER III
HIS FIRST GREAT PICTURE

His love of children—Rome—Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris—People he met—
First meeting with Signor Costa—First impressions—Mr. Aitchison
—Method of work—The importance of drapery—Sketches for his

-picture—Trials of colouring—Thackeray’s prophecy—The picture
finished—Al]most too late for the R.A.—Desperate measures taken
—Received with acclamation—Bought by the Queen—Rejoicing of

his friends = ; 5
CHAPTER IV
DISAPPOINTMENT, STRESS, AND HOLIDAY

The idol of London society—Studio in the Rue Pigalle, Paris—‘‘ The
Power of Music”—Chilling reception —Leighton’s depression —
Holiday time in Italy—Sketches of foliage and blossoms—Does not
exhibit 1857—Two pictures at R.A., 1858—Praise of the Atheneum
—Friendship with the Pre-Raphaelites—Visit to Algiers and
sketches—Mr. Pepys Cockerell in the Wineteenth Century—Sketch
of lemon tree—Ruskin’s praise—The Academy of 1859 and 1860—
Repose impossible—Spring spent at Capri—At Bath, painting the
children—John Hanson Walker—His comradeship with his sister,
Mrs. Matthews . é F . -

Az

17

3°

vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER V

IN LONDON

In Orme Square—Comparatively poor—Brilliancy of conversation—
Summer afternoon at the Crystal Palace—His studio crowded with
representatives of art, literature, and society—His kindness to the
young—Pictures of 1861—Badly hung—‘‘ The Odalisque”"— The
Star of Bethlehem” and other pictures, 1862—Letters to Mrs.
Matthews—Pictures of 1863—His exquisite girls—His work in illus-

> tration—The Cornhill Magazine and the Bible Gallery—His friend-
ship for George Mason—Death of Mason—Income secured by

Leighton : . ; - PaZE 43

CHAPTER VI
ASSOCIATE OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY

Elected A.R.A.—Travels in foreign lands—Exhibition of sketches in
Royal Society of British Artists—Pictures at the R.A. 1864-5—The
modern spirit in classic setting—Pictures at the R.A. 1866—‘‘ The
Syracusan Bride”—A Saturday morning at the studio—The Lynd-
hurst fresco—‘‘ Venus disrobing for her Bath,” 1867—First rumours
of criticism against his waxen flesh tints—‘‘ The Death of Ariadne”
and other pictures of 1868 . - 0 0

CHAPTER VII
EXTRACTS FROM LEIGHTON’S JOURNAL

Up the Nile to Phyl, 1868—First day’s journey—Sunsets over the
Nile—Phyle—Full moon at Phyle—Fright of the crew at the sight
of the great cataract—Pictures in words—‘ Little Fatima””—‘‘ The
Slinger”—A deserted garden—About the basil plant—A city of
doves—Dancing girls and festivalk—A French Egyptologist—Pro-
cession of women and girls—A love song

CHAPTER VIII
ROYAL ACADEMICIAN

Appreciation of Leighton’s work—Classicism the very essence of his
nature—The type, the all in all with him—Not of his time, yet
commanding its respect—Uniqueness of his position—Great land-
scape painter—Classification of his work—Richard Mutter on
Leighton—Beauty, Leighton’s religion

.

54

63

79

CONTENTS Vii

CHAPTER IX
HIS CLASSICAL PICTURES

“Hercules wrestling with Death” might be a Greek frieze—‘‘ The
Daphnephoria” the zenith of his power—‘‘ Cymon and Iphigenia”
embodying his creed—‘‘ Captive Andromache,” summing up of his
methods, ideals, and limitations—‘‘ Perseus and Andromeda” not
happy in effect—‘‘ The Return of Persephone” —‘‘ The Garden of
the Hesperides,” glow of colour—Single figures—Their statuesque
quality—‘‘ Clytemnestra on the Battlements of Argos”—‘‘ The Last
Watch of Hero’””—‘‘ Phryne at Eleusis ””—‘‘ The Bath of Psyche”
bought by the Chantrey Fund—‘‘Clytie” the passionate expression
of his genius 6 > * 5 . page 86

CHAPTER X
DOMESTIC AND MISCELLANEOUS SCRIPTURAL SUBJECTS

** Wedded,” typical of all the married lovers of the world—Pictures
of everyday life set in the glamour of the ideal—‘‘ The Music
Lesson” —‘‘ Winding of the Skein””—“‘Sister’s Kiss ””—‘‘ Greek Girls
picking up Pebbles by the Sea,” delightful example of Leighton’s
skill in painting transparent draperies—‘“‘Greek Girls playing
Ball,” ungraceful in attitude—‘‘Summer Moon,” peerless for
beauty—‘‘ The Egyptian Slinger,” a poem of labour—“ The Jug-
gling Girl” —‘‘ The Jew’s Quarter at Old Damascus,” an example
of seductive colour—‘ St. Jerome in the Desert,” diploma picture
—‘‘ Elijah in the Desert,” more restrained in expression—‘“‘ Elisha
and the Shunamite’s Son”—‘‘ The Sea giving up its Dead’”—
“ Rizpah,” examples of skilful compositions—His types of beauty
—Portraits of men more successful than are those of women—His
own portrait at the Uffizi Gallery . . ° c ea OF,

CHAPTER XI
FRESCOES AND SCULPTURE

The large lunettes at South Kensington—‘‘ The Arts of War”—‘‘ The
Arts of Peace’’—Process by which they were painted—Decoration
of the ceiling of a music-room in New York—Fresco of Cupid
carrying food for doves—‘‘ The Pheenicians bartering with Britons,”
a splendid gift to the Royal Exchange—‘‘ The Athlete struggling
with a Python,” bought by the Chantrey Fund—“ The Sluggard,”
a fine rendering of the stretching position—‘‘ Needless Alarms,”
admired by Sir John Millais—Design for Mrs. Barrett Browning’s
tomb, and for that of Major Sutherland Orr—His sketches in clay
and bronze—The Jubilee Medal—Summary . ; A + 109g

ane CONTENTS

CHAPTER XII
THE PRESIDENT

No President like him since Reynolds—Duties of a President—
Elected by a majority of thirty-five votes—Care for Art Education
—Impatience of impressionism—Kindness to students of the R.A.
and to outsiders—Kindness to literary men and to his critics—
Watts’s opinion of Leighton—His admiration of the “‘Old Masters
—Zeal in filling the Winter Exhibition at the R.A.—Art Gallery
on the Surrey side of London—Sunday Receptions—Colonel of the
Artist Volunteer Corps—Dance at Mr. Aitchison’s—Reception at
the R.A.—Courage under suffering ° - . page 120

CHAPTER XIII

LORD LEIGHTON’S ADDRESSES

Place as an orator. First address: The position of art in the world—
Vicissitudes of the artistic spirit—The evolution and the perplex-
ities of the modern student—Sincerity, the first condition of artistic
greatness. Second address: On the relation of artists to morals
and religion—The special importance for the English mind—
Ethical theory of art examined by history—Evidence unfavourable
—Art’s proper sphere. Third address: Relation of art to time,
place, and racial circumstance—Tracing its history in Egypt,
Chaldza, and Greece—Simplicity and truth, highest attributes of
the art of Greece. Fourth address: Art in ancient Italy—Various
theories of the origin of the Etruscans—The tomb of Volumnius
Violens, near Perugia—Art of Rome closely allied to national
temper—The art of portraiture—Love of gold destroyed Roman
glory. Fifth. address: Art in modern Italy, Tuscany and the
Renaissance—Two currents perceptible in the Renaissance—Leon-
ardo da Vinci—Raphael—Michael Angelo. Sixth address: The art
of Spain—Invasion of the Moors and struggle for their expulsion
leads to the growth of national self-consciousness and of religious
zeal—Complete embodiment of the genius of Spain in Zurbaran—
Murillo inferior to Zurbaran—Superiority of Velasquez as a painter
—The sacrifice of art to pursuit of royal favours. Seventh address:
Art of France—Uninterrupted development—Its first achievement
—The art of the enameller and the potter—Watteau, the interpreter
of the grace of his epoch. Eighth address: The art of Germany—
Music its highest artistic expression—Burghers and artisans the
lovers of German art—Albrecht Diirer, typical German, rather
than Holbein—German goldsmith’s work—Leighton’s prose as

decorative as his painting—His speeches at the annual banquet of
the R.A. . 6 - + 5 si Sh arestg

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER XIV

SOME LETTERS AND THE END

His house, and whom he entertained there—His musical ‘‘ At Homes”
—Letter to Mrs. Matthews—Love of solitude—Letter to Mrs.
Matthews from Braemar—Holiday spirit and Italy—Letter to Mrs.
Russell Barrington about the Kyrle Society—Another letter to the
same friend, refusing to speak in public—First attack of the heart
—Increase of symptoms—Enrolled in the peerage—Bronchial attack
—The end—Funeral at St. Paul’s—Monument by Brock—Sir E.
Poynter’s speech at the University—King’s tribute to Leighton at
the banquet of the R.A. 1897 0 5 : . page 15%

CHAPTER XV
LEIGHTON HOUSE

House the expression of his personality—Beauty of the mouldings—
Priceless tiles collected by Leighton—Windows from Damascus—
The studio—The Arab Hall—Inscription in Arabic—Enriched with
evidence of magnificent taste—The various reception rooms—His
unpretentious bedroom—The house on reception days—During the
week of memory—To-day 1 A 5 . «167

CHAPTER XVI
THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS

Ruskin’s criticism of the Cimabue picture—Dante G. Rossetti’s letter
to Mr. W. Allingham noticing the picture—The 7izzes, the
Atheneum, the Spectator upon it—Reaction shown in the criti-
cisms of ‘The Triumph of Music’”—Fluctuation of opinion—The
execution “too smooth ”—‘‘ The Daphnephoria” hailed as a great
work—‘‘ Captive Andromache” culmination of his second period—
‘*Cymon and Iphigenia” greatly praised—M. de la Sizeranne on
Leighton—Mr. Richard Mutter on his art—The 7zmes on Leigh-
ton’s sketches—Sir William Richmond on Leighton’s art Fi x70)

LIST OF THE WORKS OF LORD LEIGHTON

Classical, Mythological, and Poetical Subjects . a c peEtOx
Scriptural Subjects . A fe : C : + 199
Domestic and Rural Subjects 5 6 > . 200

Types of Beauty and Studies 5 ; ; é . 202

> CONTENTS

Portraits . A . page 204
Frescoes and Deconntive Work ; + 207
Miscellaneous, including Sketches eee some Sinwle Ficues ni . 208
Sculpture . . c a 5 A = 3 2E2
Medallion . 212
Prices fetched for ehebines belonging ie Lord ‘Leighton at the Sale
after his Death . 213
Prices fetched for some of teers Tipton’ s Sieronts > 3 . 214
BOOKS CONSULTED 4 = 3 : oi ke
INDEX . . A 5 5 A § « 215
NOTE

In the compilation of this volume I have consulted various
friends of Lord Leighton and certain books dealing with his
life and work. To all who have helped me by word or by
writing I extend my most grateful thanks. To Mr. Rhys, the
author of a beautiful and unique tribute to Lord Leighton’s
genius, I am especially indebted ; and to Mrs. Andrew Lang,
whose admirable monograph upon the artist I have consulted.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LORD LEIGHTON . 5 5 « Frontispiece
TO FACE PAGE

TWO EARLY DESIGNS, GIOTTO SEHNSUCHT . .
DRAWING IN PENCIL OF A MONK DIVIDING TWO
ENEMIES . . . . . .
PENCIL DRAWING OF HEAD—THE PORTRAIT OF THE
PRETTIEST AND THE WICKEDEST BOY IN ROME .

COMPLETE DESIGN FOR CIMABUE’S MADONNA, AS
FIRST ARRANGED FOR THE PICTURE IN PENCIL AND
CHINA WHITE, ON BROWN PAPER ‘ ‘ ‘

DRAWING IN PENCIL OF FIG LEAVES . ; F

VIEW FROM THE RUINED THEATRE, TAORMINA, SICILY

STUDY OF A HEAD : : A 5 4

RUSTIC MUSIC F - : « :

BAY OF SALAMIS . . . e .

GOLDEN HOURS : : ; : ‘

STUDIES OF FIGURES AND WHOLE DESIGN FOR THE
PAINTING “ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE” , . F

CITY OF TOMBS, ASSIOUT, EGYPT : : :

PAGE FROM LEIGHTON’S DIARY . - : :

HELEN OF TROY 5 3 a : :

CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE ‘ : s

CYMON AND IPHIGENIA 4 ; 5 x

CLYTEMNESTRA FROM THE BATTLEMENTS OF ARGOS
WATCHES FOR THE BEACON FIRES WHICH ARE TO
ANNOUNCE THE RETURN OF AGAMEMNON : :

12

18

24

28
34
39
4I
48
55
57

62
64
74
81

85
90

93

xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE PAGE

THE BATH OF PSYCHE ‘ : : 7 OS
THE FRIGIDARIUM F ; , ; ny IO
PORTRAIT OF SIR RICHARD BURTON : : = 106
DAPHNEPHORIA 3 : : 1 a1OS

AND THE SEA GAVE UP THE DEAD THAT WERE IN IT I12
THE ATHLETE WRESTLING WITH THE PYTHON. TATE

GALLERY, MILLBANK . . . “aS
THE SLUGGARD. TATE GALLERY, MILLBANK . . 118
THE EGYPTIAN SLINGER . . . » »E2Q
STUDY FOR DRAPERY OF CHILD SINGING IN THE PRO-

CESSION OF THE DAPHNEPHORIA . . » 123
THE DRAPED STUDIES FOR FATIDICA . . » 129
STUDIES FOR POSITION OF FATIDICA . . - 130
HIGHLY FINISHED STUDY FOR DRAPERY OF DEMETER,

FROM THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE . . - £52
DESIGN IN OILS FOR ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON . 157

STUDY OF HAIR FOR THE CLYTIE. SLEEPING ATTEND-
ANTS FOR THE PICTURE OF CYMON AND IPHIGENIA 162
STUDIES FOR A PICTURE LORD LEIGHTON WAS DESIGN-
ING WHEN HE DIED. EXECUTED THE LAST DAY HE
WORKED, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21ST, 1896 , 5 He)
VENETIAN LADY

: F 5 , i608

THE PLEDGE OF APHRODITE REDEEMED . ; SOLO

FIGURE HOLDING JAR ON KNEE. STUDY FOR THE
PICTURE OF CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE . ; sapiye

SKETCH OF SUMMER SLUMBER, PRESENTED BY THE
KING WHEN PRINCE OF WALES . . Go WAS

FREDERIC LEIGHTON

CHAPTER oI
BOYHOOD

The painter’s family—Influence of his father—Gift for drawing
shown at an early age—IIIness—Mrs, Leighton—Travels on
the Continent—Return to England—Death of his grand-
father—Family go to Germany and to Italy—Father’s
perplexities— Hiram Power’s verdict.

REDERIC LEIGHTON was born at Scar-

borough, on the 3rd of December, 1830.
His family originally came from Shropshire, but
migrated northwards into Yorkshire some three
or four hundred years before.

Any view of the artist would be misleading
which passed over in silence his earlier years, or
the influence of his family—that of his father
especially—over his youth. For two generations
on the paternal side the Leightons had been
doctors. His grandfather, Sir James, was Court
physician in Russia, specially attached to the
service of the Empress, wife of Alexander I. He
was also doctor to the Czar Nicholas. His own
father was a medical man of wide attainments,
whose mind was scientific, whose methods were

B

2 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

essentially exact, and whose reading was almost
unlimited. To the end of his life Dr. Leighton
studied the scientific thought and discoveries of
his day. Deafness, brought on by a neglected
cold, came upon him, and stood between him and
his patients, so that little by little he had to give
up practice. Then he found his consolation in
reading; it became the absorbing pleasure and
business of his life. He was also a splendid con-
versationalist, and to speak to a friend ¢éfe-a-téfe
remained to the end of his days one of his finest
enjoyments. He had no comprehension, however,
of the artistic temperament; and the liberties the
artistic imagination took with facts sometimes
struck him as a lapse from the straight path of
absolute and unalterable truth. He was almost
austere in character, but his manner was urbane
and charming. The great gift of words which was
so remarkable in his son came in direct succession
from the father. Dr. Leighton took great interest
in the education of his children—in that of his son
especially. He taught them the classics and
communicated to Frederic his enthusiasm for the
myths, the philosophy, the poems of antiquity.
He also taught his son anatomy, a science over
which the latter exercised such mastery as almost
at times to sacrifice to it the law of beauty, a law
that it was the passion of his soul to serve.
Frederic showed from an early age that he hada
gift for drawing. He was always scribbling what
he saw. He was a high-spirited boy, fond of
adventure and sport, and he got constantly into
trouble for lapses of discipline. There is a story

BOYHOOD 3

told of how one day the little lad was under
sentence of punishment—the sentence being that
he was condemned to be locked up in a room by
himself. As the door was shut upon him the child
cried out gleefully, in triumphant tones, through
the keyhole, ‘‘I do not care; I have got my
pencil!” He had his pencil, and with it he was
in the realm of pure fantasy. What cared he if
the room he was shut in was an attic, or that
good children and respectable folk would have
nothing to do with him? He had his pencil, as
Aladdin had his lamp; he would bid the genii
catch seductive figments and make them live.
When he was about nine years of age he had
an attack of scarlet fever, and it was during his
convalescence that the talent he possessed for art
first decidedly showed itself. He would while away
hours in making drawings either from imagination
or from memory; and a sketch of two greyhounds,
done at this time, is still treasured by some of his
kinsfolk. A touching little personal reminiscence
of that time I shall give in Mrs. Orr’s own words.
They were great comrades, and stern destiny had
parted them. ‘‘I was not allowed to go into his
room. My father has since admitted that no
other measure against infection was taken—it
was not usual in those days. We badly wanted
to look at each other, and he undertook to show
himself while I just peeped round the door. There
were two French beds side by side against the
wall on the same side as the door. He was in the
farthest one, and as I came in he crawled forward
on his hands and knees on to the edge of the nearer

4 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

bed. I can remember him even now; such a
pathetic little figure in his white nightgown and
the white nightcap tied under his chin! He
smiled triumphantly at me out of his pale face and
touching brown eyes. He had those eyes always.
They were there the moment the agony of death
had passed. The bright boyish face was there
too. I see the little boy and the aging man to-
gether.”

Of Mrs. Leighton, the daughter of George
Augustus Nash, of Edmonton, little need be said
here. She was an anxious and careful mother, to
whom her children were greatly attached. Her
talent for music was remarkable. Her daughter
Mrs. Matthews, the youngest, inherited the gift,
while knowledge and love of music gave to
her son some of the strongest emotions of his
life. In the winter following her boy’s illness
she had a fierce attack of rheumatic fever, from
which she painfully and slowly recovered. It
left her heart in a very enfeebled condition, and
it became necessary to her to leave the humid
atmosphere of England to breathe the lighter
air of the Continent. The whole family went
abroad. They went to Germany, Switzerland,
and Italy. Frederic and his sisters picked flowers
in the Swiss mountains, and slithered down
grassy places. In the joy of existence the little
lad’s ambitions were seemingly forgotten; but
in his own heart they were ever present. He had
seen some of Lance’s fruit pieces; their freshness
; and bloom appealed to him, and he had said to
himself, ‘‘I, too, shall paint like this. I, too, shall

BOYHOOD 5

be a painter.” ‘‘As long as I can remember I
was determined to be an artist,” Sir Frederic
often said in after life, speaking of those early
' days and of their unforgettable memories. Every-
thing that he saw he wished to reproduce. Beauty
appealed to him in a singular manner, so that
in the midst of a game he would suddenly stop
to note the effect of the sunshine glistening on his
sister’s hair, or to note the design of a butterfly’s
wing. Then the family went to Florence, where
they were detained by the elder girl’s illness.

From thence in the winter they migrated to Rome,
where the boy and his elder sister learnt Latin
_ together from a young priest, and where Frederic
was allowed to run about alone, making sketches.
Rome,-where every ruin, every relic of the past,
holds and fascinates, where everything ministers
to art, and men and women are models waiting
in the market-place, delighted the boy. He was
always filling sketch-books with his impressions.
A fountain, drawn with surprising care and realisa-
tion of its sculptured beauty, is still preserved—or
was but a little while ago—in the archives of the
family.

His father could not shut his eyes to the fact
that Frederic had a native talent. He resolved,
however, that this gift, albeit cultivated, should
in no way stand in the way of the boy’s general
education. He might be a painter, but he must
first of all, and pre-eminently, be an accomplished
gentleman. So while he put him under the care
of Signor Meli to learn to draw, he also insisted
upon unrelaxed attention to classics and other

6 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

branches of education. Frederic was learning
Italian and French, and was already speaking
these languages with something of the fluency
with which he used his mother tongue.

Then came the return to England to the
children’s grandfather’s country-house at Green-
ford, where they had already spent several
summers. In adventure and gipsying the days
passed enchantingly. They were imaginative
children, and lent themselves to every fable.
‘‘We used to fancy ourselves in the wilderness,”
says Mrs. Sutherland Orr, recalling these sensa-
tional times; ‘‘a rather shrubby and shady part
of the great garden was our favourite spot for
play-acting. Frederic, I remember, would lead
me blindfold to a particular little recess, only a
few yards from the gravel path, and therefore
requiring many twists and turns to make me lose
my bearings. It was important I should lose
them, but I didn’t lose them after all: the smell
of the adjacent pigsty kept the locality before
me, though some eau de Cologne had been spilt
to neutralise it.” Quarrelling over a game that
was of their own invention, and acting also, en-
livened their days. But the hours of childhood
were numbered ; the world of study was calling
them. In the winter Frederic went to the Uni-
versity College School, and in the following
summer their grandfather died.

It was then decided to go abroad for some time,
for Mrs. Leighton’s heart was still decidedly weak,
and she was unable to stand the English climate.
Germany was chosen for the children’s education.

BOYHOOD 7

At Berlin the boy had tutors, but he still spent
every spare moment he had in making sketches
and in looking at the pictures in the galleries.
Then Frankfort was decided upon, and while the
girls were left at a boarding school, the son was
sent to Stellwag’s famous institution, and their
father and mother started for England. On their
return they all journeyed to Italy and settled in
Florence for the winter. Frederic was by that
time an accomplished linguist, and his art talent
had greatly developed.

He entered the studio of Bezzuoli and Sevolini—
celebrated artists, much believed in by the Floren-
tines. Doubts as to the greatness of his masters

existed in the lad’s mind. ‘‘Who have you in
any way to approach the old masters?” he asked
Bettino, a fellow-student. ‘‘ We have our great

Michael Angelo and Raphael in Bezzuoli and
Sevolini and Ciseri,” answered Bettino confidently.
Leighton did not agree with this verdict, but he
worked on nevertheless, acquiring under these
teachers some of the Florentine mannerisms
which were long to cling to his art.

His father constantly asked himself the ques-
tion what was the boy to be? He wished his
son to continue in the tradition of the family, and
to prepare himself to be a surgeon; but if ever
one bore clearly the mark of the artistic vocation
it was this youth. His spirited sketches, his
arduous attention to drawing, his constantly
expressed determination to be a painter, and no-
thing but a painter, proclaimed his mission, On
the other hand, there was the folly in Society’s

8 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

estimation of looking upon painting as a career.
Still Dr. Leighton’s natural intelligence would
not allow him to be swayed by prejudices. He
could not tell if his son was exceptionally gifted ;
he did not know what were the prizes he might
strive for in the profession. If some artist
would assure him of Frederic’s genius he would
consent to let the boy follow his own bent.
He resolved to consult Hiram Powers, the
sculptor of ‘‘The Greek Slave,” who was estab-
lished in Florence. One morning, therefore,
accompanied by his son, carrying a large port-
folio, he made his way to the sculptor’s studio.
We can imagine the boy’s excitement as he
trudged along, waiting to hear the great man’s
verdict that was to prove decisive. Hiram Powers
received them, heard the father’s story, and
appreciated the importance of the decision he was
asked to make. The drawings were placed before
him, the sketch-books, the more finished studies
and cartoons, the studies of colour. The lad
eagerly watched the sculptor’s countenance as he
passed in silence from one to the other, not
daring to speak, breathlessly waiting. At last
the examination was finished.

‘*Shall I make him a painter?” asked Dr.
Leighton.

‘Sir, you cannot help yourself; Nature has
made him one already,” answered Hiram Powers.

‘“What can he hope for if I let him prepare
for this career?”

‘‘Let him aim at the highest,” answered the
sculptor ; ‘‘he will be certain to get there.”

CHAPTER II
STUDENT DAYS

At the Academy of Florence—Knowledge of anatomy—In
Frankfort — ‘‘The Nazarenes’”—At Brussels — ‘“ Giotto
sehnsucht””—Paris and the Louvre—Parallelism between
Leighton and Correggio—Steinle—Festival at Darmstadt—
His first etching—A ffection for Steinle.

3 verdict had been given. He was to be
a painter. ‘‘Let him aim at the highest ;
he will be certain to get there”! Glorious
words for ardent youth to hear. Still friends
and relations murmured that one of such high
intellectual promise should waste his time in
dabbling with a profession unworthy of a gentle-
man. There was still time for hope. He wasa
lad, they said, his general education was not
finished; some providential interference might
occur and prevent the fulfilment of that mad
intention. Meanwhile he pursued his ideal. In
the Florentine Academy, the ‘‘ Accademia delle
belle Arti,” he continued to study under Bezzuoli
and Sevolini. He attended classes in anatomy in
the hospital under Zanetti, and continued to be
his father’s pupil. ‘‘ When I was fourteen,” he
said long years after to a friend, ‘‘I knew more
of anatomy than I know now. I owe my know-
ledge to my father. He would teach me the

9

10 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

names of the bones and muscles. He would
show them to me in action and in repose, then I
would have to draw them from memory. Until
my memory drawing was perfect he would not
let it pass.” This knowledge of anatomy would
serve the boy whether as an artist or a surgeon ;
for still Dr. Leighton dreamt of his son as
carrying on the traditions of the family and
winning fame as a physician. He and all those
who thought the lad’s resolution might be made
to waver guessed little the quality of his iron
will. Debonair, impulsive and emotional, easily
drawn away to serve others, where his art was
concerned he was not to be moved. He early
recognised the value of time. It was a valuable
discipline that enabled him to snatch precious
moments from his general studies, and allowed
no other preoccupation to stand in his way.
Bezzuoli and Sevolini recognised in him an ex-
ceptional talent, far greater than any they had
had to deal with before, they recognised also an
indomitable nature allied to a strange sweetness
of disposition. He was greatly loved of the
pleasant Italian lads who worked with him.
When in the spring of that year he left for
England, his fellow-students, loth to part with
him, followed the diligence in which he sat,
running behind it, and crying, ‘‘Come back,
Inglesino! Come back!”

The winter months were spent in England
mostly under the roof of his mother’s brother
and his wifey Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Nash, in
Montagu Square. One of his sisters was with

STUDENT DAYS II

their mother at Hampstead Heath, slowly recover-
_ing from an illness that had sapped her strength.
Then the spring came, and the whole family re-
turned to Frankfort, where Dr. Leighton had
bought and furnished a house. At Frankfort he
had to resume his general studies; but his leisure,
filled with dreams of art, was spent in arduous
efforts to redeem the time. It was at this period
that he made the acquaintance of Steinle, a
man whose fervent Catholic spirit expressed
itself in art, and who exercised a magnetic in-
fluence over all those who approached him.
Leighton felt profoundly attracted towards him.
_ Too little is known in England of that curious
and exalted German school that numbered among
its members Overbeck, Veit, Schnorr, Cornelius,
and Pfihler. The band of men who composed
it were called ‘‘the Nazarenes.” Their world
was the spiritual world. Modern thought did
not influence them. Their ideals were those
of Raphael and his predecessors, their senti-
ments those of Fra Angelico di Fiesole. Pro-
foundly religious, they studied nature reverently ;
they sought to exclude all that was degraded
and trivial from their work. They saw the
divine idea everywhere; and Steinle made war
against the clever trickeries and affectations of
the decadent Florentine school. Leighton was
greatly impressed by the painter who was so
remote from the world and its ambitions, so ab-
sorbed in an elevated conception of art.

Till he was seventeen he led a dual existence
between the claims of a classic education and of

12 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

his absorbing love of art. He spoke German
like a German, Italian was almost his mother
tongue, French he had also mastered. At seven-
teen came the time of his deliverance. He
entered the ‘‘Staedelsche Institut,” of which
Professor Becker was the headmaster, and then
he set forth to try what he could do alone. He
went to Brussels, took a studio and worked by
himself. He was introduced to the painter
Wiertz, to the historical painter Gallait, who
both recognised the genius with which his young
spirit was alight.

The blue horizons of Italy, the gaiety of life
there, the art of the Florentines, in love with
existence and the charm thereof, attracted his
pagan soul; on the other hand, there was Steinle,
the austere painter he loved, who feared colour as
an indulgence of the senses, who had no sympathy
with the tricky methods, the cheap mannerisms
of the Italian school. About this time Leighton
painted the picture of Cimabue finding Giotto
in the fields of Florence. It was a group of four
small full-length figures. Giotto is lying on a
bank among his sheep and is drawing the figure
of a lamb with a bit of coal on a stone. Under
the sketch of the shepherd-boy Leighton has
written, ‘‘ Giotto sehnsucht.” It spoke more elo-
quently than words of the home-sickness for art
that he himself was feeling. As Giotto was sick
with longing, so was he sick with longing to
enter into the land of the ideal. It was the first
picture he painted, and it has something of an
inner meaning. It was exhibited in the Steinle

. LHIASNHAS—OLLOI ,, SNOISHG ATINVA OAL

Tyee FREDERIC LEIGHTON

present masters Sir Frederic Leighton delights
most in softly blended colours, and his ideal of
beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any
since Correggio’s time.”

He then returned to Frankfort to study seri-
ously udder Steinle, whose personality exercised
over him a fascination that lasted long after his
influence as a teacher had vanished. Under his
guidance Leighton was largely purified of the
meretricious influence of the Florentine school.
His art grew more exact, it gained in distinction.
‘¢The Duel between Tybalt and Romeo.” belongs
to this period, also a cartoon of the plague of
Florence, inspired by the narrative of Boccaccio.
This drawing expressed all the cynicism of the
joy-loving Italian spirit before the panic of
anguish. A group of revellers to the left are
laughing as one falls smitten by the fell foe, and
the death-cart goes past gathering the victims.
Between the two groups is a woman hurrying
along carrying her baby clasped to her breast,
while by her side walks a child in careless in-
difference, leading a donkey along. All the grue-
some horror of the time of terror is expressed ;
but this note of despair and of sordidness was
seldom struck by him. His passionate love of
beauty kept him from representing scenes in
which the element of hope was absent, or in
which the redeeming element of human love did
not largely enter.

He was of a light and joyous spirit, fond of
music, of dancing, brightening the stress of
work with the spirit of holiday. In Leighton

STUDENT DAYS 5

House hangs the sketch of a picture he and a
comrade painted on the occasion of a students’
festival at Darmstadt. The city was all alive
with historic merrymakers. Leighton and his
friend Signor Gamba prepared to celebrate
the pageant in true artistic fashion. Through
the day and on to long past midnight they
worked, painting by torchlight the walls of a
ruined schloss. When the morning of the festival
dawned there stood the picture of a knight in
armour receiving the guests, while Spring hailed
the caricatured representatives of the three great
branches of art—music, painting, and sculpture.
In a corner to the left the two artists are seen
watching the scene. The schloss has nearly fallen
into ruins, but the Archduke has had a roof built
over the wall to shelter the memorable fresco,

He practised etching under Steinle. His first
drawing in the new process, a delicate example of
it, he dedicated to his master with this graceful
inscription written beneath :—

‘Eine Bliithe vom Batime den Sie gepflegt
Dankbar Ihnen zu Fiissen legt.”
F. LEIGHTON.

Under Steinle’s supervision Leighton also
made the cartoons for his great picture of
Cimabue’s Madonna carried in procession through
the streets of Florence. The master advised
him throughout. He recognised that the pupil’s
heart was in Italy and in Italian subjects, and he
counselled him to go back to the land of his
dreams to paint. ‘‘Go to Rome rather than to
Florence,” he said; and he gave him an intro-

16 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

duction to Cornelius who was settled there.
Leighton clung with affection to the master who
had shared his young heart’s enthusiasm for a
high ideal. There were many who thought
lightly of art, who considered life wasted spent
in its pursuit. Here was a man who thought
nobly of it, who lavished upon it the highest
attributes of his soul, and who thought that to
paint finely was but another form of true wor-
ship.

His affection for Steinle remained long after he
had left him. Years had elapsed and the youth
who had stood on the threshold of the temple of
Art, longing to enter in, was the President of the
Royal Academy when he wrote to his sister Mrs.
Matthews: ‘‘One very hasty line (in a sea of
correspondence) to say that I hear Steinle and
his daughter sit near you at Ragatz. Give them
my affectionate love, especially the dear old boy,
for the daughter has not seen me for ages, tho’
I knew her and her geschwister all as children. I
should so like to see him again.”

CHAPTER. ITI
HIS FIRST GREAT PICTURE

His love of children—Rome—Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris—People
he met—First meeting with Signor Costa—First impressions
—Mr. Aitchison—Method of work—The importance of
drapery—Sketches for his picture—Trials of colouring—
Thackeray’s prophecy—The picture finished—Almost too
late for the R.A.—Desperate measures taken—Received
with acclamation—Bought by the Queen—Rejoicing of his
friends.

ap HE most eventful period of Leighton’s life
was at hand. He was about to pass from
the irresponsible days of studentship to those of
the responsible artist ; his appeal was henceforth
to be to the public and to the critics.

It was in 1852 that he set his face towards
Rome, the Mecca towards which all travel,
attracted by the promise, of the seductive secret
of beauty it holds. That year he had painted
several studies, among which ‘‘A Persian Pedlar,”’
a small full-length figure of a man in oriental
costume, seated cross-legged, a long pipe in his
hand, that was shown in the commemorative
exhibition of 1897. He accompanied his family
to Brussels, and there bidding them farewell he
travelled towards Italy, the land of his dreams.
There are preserved at Leighton House some of
the sketches done on that memorable journey.

Cc 17

18 FREDERIC LEIGHTON ~

One is of a monk leading a young man away
from his enemy. It reveals, perhaps, more clearly
than any other Steinle’s influence. It is strong in
expression, and the drawing, a perfectly definite
outline, has a great, an almost remorseless
severity. He drew and painted also the children
on the way. While at Frankfort he had spent
happy hours in the outlying villages, especially
at Cronberg, sketching the quaint German little
ones. He delighted in their grave baby faces, in
the unconscious grace of their movements, in the
shell-like beauty of their little hands and feet. All
his life the winsomeness of childhood enchanted
him. There is a story told of someone entering
his studio in London one day, and finding Leigh-
ton’s model resting while he held her baby in his
arms, rejoicing in the loveliness of the little feet
with toes like rosebuds. Children loved him also,
they would follow him, putting their hands con-
fidingly into his, making him feel, he would say,
‘a thrill of delight at the clinging touch of their
little fingers.”

At Rome he was introduced to Mr. and Mrs.
Sartoris. Mr. Sartoris had met him in Paris the
year before, and he had said to his wife that he
had come across an extraordinary youth who
‘could speak equally well French, German,
Italian, and Spanish.” She welcomed the young
artist cordially, and almost from the first began
to exercise an extraordinary fascination over his
spirit. Her salon at Rome was the meeting-place
of a society careful of things of the mind and of
art. Leighton met everyone there who was worth

NG TWO ENEMIES

OF A MONK DIVIDL

DRAWING IN PENCIL

HIS FIRST GREAT PICTURE 19

}meeting. His hostess, a woman of genius, a
great artist in song, gave him the encourage-
) ment and the sympathy a gifted woman alone can
give. At her musical parties he found refresh-
}ment to his spirit. He sang charmingly—his
@voice was a light tenor; he whistled like a
bird ; he was the best dancer in Rome. In Mrs.
4 Sartoris’s short story, published in the Cornhdil
| Magazine, ‘‘A Week in a French Country House,”
) Leighton appears in all the charm of his youth
jand of his impassioned enthusiasm. He met
| Thackeray at her house, the Brownings, George
Mason, Arpad the Hungarian historian, Lord
Lyons, Gibson the sculptor, the painters Hébert,
| Bouguereau, and many other eminent folk. He
‘met George Sand also, but was not very favour-
| ably impressed by the author of Consuelo. There
was the other side of his life, that of the hard-
) working painter, vigilant and absorbed, whose
) hours of relaxation were spent in the society of other
| painters, with whom he sympathised in their lowly
) beginnings. He made Mr. Aitchison’s acquaint-
| ance after the Holy Week in 1853, being intro-
| duced to him by George Mason, and the acquaint-
ance ripened into a friendship that lasted all his
‘life. Signor Costa has told us how he first met
| Leighton. It was ona day in May, 1853, on the
/ occasion of the artists’ annual picnic, which that
| year took place at Cevara, a farm on the Roman
_Campagna. About a hundred donkeys were hired
| for the occasion, and the party halted at Tor de’
Schiavi, three miles out of Rome and half the
| distance to Cevara. They tied up their beasts at

20 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

a little distance, and they were eating merrily,
when by an evil fortune one of the donkeys kicked
over a beehive, and out swarmed the bees. The
donkeys unloosed themselves and fled, and the
picnickers fled likewise. One donkey alone had
been unable to escape from the cord that tethered
it. Costa tells how he saw a young man with
fair curly hair, dressed in velvet, slip on gloves,
and, tying a handkerchief over his face, run to the
rescue of the unfortunate beast. Waiting for this
chivalrous champion of dumb animals to return,
Costa asked him his name and congratulated him
upon what he had done. Leighton and he were
destined to meet again as victors in the contests
of the day. The Italian had won the prize for the
donkey-race, while the Englishman had carried
off that for tilting at a ring with a flexible cane.
As they drank wine together from the president’s
cup they again shook hands. Thus began afriend-
ship that lasted until the death of Leighton.
Meanwhile he was writing home. ‘‘ The first
impression,” said Mrs. Orr, ‘‘ conveyed by his
letters was his recognition of the strong and en-
nobling influence which Catholicism had exercised
on Italian art during the middle ages, the immense
earnestness of religious feeling with which the old
masters worked. He wished he could become a
Catholic ; a mood, of course, that passed away.”
If genius is, to take Carlyle’s definition, the
power of taking pains, Leighton possessed genius
to a high degree. Already he recognised the
value of punctuality. Time was a possession
that, if wasted, could never be made up again.

—

HIS FIRST GREAT PICTURE 21

In his disposal of that priceless commodity he
showed the clear comprehension and iron will that
were remarkable features of his character, where
his art was concerned. He was resolved to win,
and he set about carrying out his resolve with a
method from which he never departed. He made
a mosaic of his days, in which every hour was
set down, with its appointed task, and he allowed
nothing to interfere with that part which related
to his work. ‘‘I used to read for him Tom Taylor’s
Life of Haydon,” Mr. Aitchison told me, speaking
of that time. ‘‘I would go very early in the morn-
ing, but he was up and at work before me. He
was always vivacious and alert, but resolute to
his task. I would watch the way he proceeded. He
had his cartoon before him. The cartoon was the
general scheme of his picture ; then he would take
the figures one by one; draw them very carefully
—he drew them first from the nude—then he
would trace them and drape them. They were
drawn quite small. He then prepared his colour
scheme. When all the preparations were made
according to his satisfaction, he would trace his
finished work. He used twine for the purpose,
which he fastened in squares, both to the sketch
and to the canvas, which had been ordered
to scale, and it was then quite easy to transfer
it. He would draw the figures on the canvas,
once more from the nude, and paint them in
monochrome. He would next drape them,
arranging the draperies fold by fold upon the
living model, from his sketch, also painting them
in monochrome, so the whole picture was finished

22 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

in grey. From the moment the picture was
traced he went on without a break. He never
altered a line of the design or a colour of the
scheme.” This was the system that Leighton
afterwards elaborated. Mr. Spielmann, in an
article written long years after, in May, 1889, in
the Magazine of Art, when the young artist’s
dreams had become splendid achievements, tells
us that he carried out this system in all his
greatest works. How he first prepared a careful
sketch in black and white chalk, on brown paper,
of the general design of the picture ; how he then
made a sketch of each of the models from the
nude, in the intended positions; then another
sketch of each of the figures in the same position,
draped ; the figures would then be ‘‘ placed in
-their surroundings and established in exact re-
lation to the canvas,” which had been ordered
to scale. Then comes a sketch in colour of
the whole. Upon the actual canvas the artist
redrew the outline of his forms, painting them in
highly finished monochrome from the life. ‘‘Every
muscle, every joint, every crease is there.” Then
came the work with reference to the draperies,
the arrangement of them on the model, the
transference to the canvas, and the painting of
them in monochrome; until the whole resembled
‘fa print of any warm tone.” The colour came
next, applied over the preparation. Inspiration,
it will be seen, belonged only to the initial stages
of the work; to the first sketch that showed
the conception of the artist. It ceased when he
began the labour of elaboration. This minute and

HIS FIRST GREAT PICTURE — 23

elaborate system was very different from that
adopted by Millais, who painted the figures straight
on to the canvas as suited the inspiration of the
moment, who changed the colour and the fall of
the draperies according to his taste. It somewhat
took away from the air of spontaneity which is
precious and appealing in work. Leighton’s
numberless and splendid sketches testify to the
care and accuracy with which he studies figures,
drapery, landscape. For every picture we find
drawings of the nude figures, of the draped figure,
of landscape and architecture. He paid great
attention to the fall of folds, keeping them in
relation to his general scheme of line; and some-
times spending hours in arranging what he would
copy in half an hour. This was all the more
remarkable as the German school paid little heed
to details, and pupils were expected to invent
draperies and accessories. Leighton had shown
himself a great adept at doing this, making
skilful drawings of folds that he told a friend
afterwards were made de chic. But in Rome he
recognised the importance of the study of drapery
—a study which he never relinquished—and which
he would insist that the pupils under his care at
the R.A. should take up. Some of the most
suggestive sketches at Leighton House are simple
studies of folds.

We have spoken of his punctuality. At Rome
he suffered greatly from the irregularity with
which models treated his engagements. Mr.
Aitchison remembers how on one occasion his
model was late; Leighton chafed at the waiting,

24 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

and he asked his friend to put on the cloak of
Cimabue that he was painting.

The sketches he made for the picture were
numerous. Some are to be seen among the
studies at Leighton House. Delicate drawings
of heads and hands, of bits of drapery in
pencil, elaborated with grace and painstaking
finish. Some of the portraits are those he copied
from a faded fresco in the Capella Spagnuola,
Ste. Maria Novella, in Florence. In the half-lit
chapel the countenances of Cimabue, of Giotto,
of Simone Memmi could be dimly discerned.
Perched on a ladder he worked in that twilight
atmosphere, and the absolute precision of his
rendering of the old-world faces can be perfectly
appreciated by those only who have striven to
catch something of their meaning. He designed
the dress of Cimabue of white and gold from
that old fresco. On the drawing that he so pain-
fully and lovingly wrought he appended notes of
the colour of the costumes. There, too, was the
charming drawing we reproduce of a boy’s head,
the ‘‘ prettiest and wickedest boy in Rome,” as
Leighton used to call him.

Of the manner of painting the picture Signor
Costa gives us some interesting details. It was
underpainted when he first saw it in white and
blue-black, and drawn to perfection. Returning
to Leighton’s studio in the Via della Purificazione
some time after he found that the picture had
been painted in, with great force. The colour
inclined somewhat to purple, but the artist
counted on remedying this with a slight glaze

a)
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Fale 7’

MAYER St

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PENCIL DRAWING OF HEAD
: “rH PRETTIEST AND THE WICKEDEST BOY IN ROME”

HIS FIRST GREAT PICTURE 2 5

pf gamboge. He had put it into colour in three
weeks. Afterwards Leighton regretted having
jused blue-black for the monochrome foundation 2
‘t was cold and crude in its effect, and he sub-
stituted terre verte or umber in the grey. He
Was always curious about the methods of the
bld masters, and about this time he joined a
society of artists formed to discover them. A
felebrated picture-dealer, Simonetta, of Venice,
elped them in their researches. For their
benefit he would peel the surface of some
Antique painting already injured. Schiavone,
jwhen subjected to the process, was discovered
yo have used greenish grey for the demi-tints
i3 etween the local colours and the light. Bassano,
Giorgione, and Titian used black mixed with
white; Correggio had the light painted over
silver grey. They found in Sir Henry Layard’s
allery an unfinished picture by Bonifazio—the
tame that Velasquez bought to take to Spain in
rder to show the artists there the secrets of the
Venetian underpaint—an underpainting carried
hroughout in grey.

Thus between hard work, enjoyment, and the
watercourse of friends, whose lifelong affection
ind trust he won, two years passed. Thackeray,
who knew him, was the first to prophesy the
treat success that awaited him. We all know
the famous phrase that the incomparable novelist
ddressed to Millais, then an ardent pre-
Raphaelite. ‘‘Millais, my boy, I have met in
ome a versatile young dog called Leighton,
vho will one of these days run you hard for

|
|

26 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

the presidentship.” About this time also the
Prince of Wales came over with his tutor to
Rome, and to Leighton was entrusted the task
of showing the royal visitor over the various
studios. A friendship that was an honour to the
King as it was to the painter then began, and it
was kept up till Leighton’s death.

Sir Edward Poynter was then a young student.
He has told us how he knew Leighton when
at Rome painting the Cimabue picture which
brought him to fame. ‘‘We called Leighton
the Admirable Crichton,” he said, ‘‘ because of
his accomplishments and the perfection to which
he brought everything which he undertook. He
was so light-hearted at that time, so full of life
and energy, his spirits were so buoyant, he
seemed born for a life of enjoyment. But under-
neath that joyousness lay the passionate love of
the art he had chosen to serve, and a determina-
tion to excel and to attain to the highest mastery
in its practice.”

Several studies belong to these two years.
One is a portrait of Miss Laing (Lady Nias),
which was shown at the commemorative exhibi-
tion held at Burlington House after his death.
A graceful and delightful presentation of a charm-
ing girl.

And now the great picture was finished. It
was seen by his friends in Rome, and it moved
them to enthusiasm. They who had witnessed
the concentration of the young man’s life upon
work saw in it the rich reward of so much
devotion. The composition was quaint and

HIS FIRST GREAT PICTURE = 27

learned, the drawing strong and delicate, the
colour rich and serene. There were traces of
the student still in a certain inequality of touch,
a certain lack of modelling in the countenances ;
but it was noble and stately as a whole, a
pictured dream of medieval Italy. In the crowd
moving jocund and orderly we recognise the
portraits of Cimabue and Giotto, Arnolfo di Lapo,
Gaddo Gaddi, Andrea Tafi, Nicola Pisano, Buffal-
macco, Simone Memmi, and Dante. Above the
grey wall rising behind, giving unity to the con-
ception, we catch a glimpse of the Italian city
among oleanders and yew trees; a tall shrine
‘cuts the line of the wall, which is also broken by
that of the great picture carried in triumph, and
by groups of figures sitting in a window aloft.
Cimabue walks in front of his work clad in white,
a wreath of laurels encircling his peaked cap.
He leads Giotto, dressed in a dark purple close-
fitting garment, by the hand; the shepherd-boy,
just fresh from the fields, gazes wild-eyed about
him; a musician bends, tuning his theobo; a
maiden, her head crowned with blue flowers,
plays a dulcimer; another beats her tambourine.
Gorgeous costumes of orange, of yellow, of red, of
scarlet and purple, lend their colour to this com-
position. Dante, clad in grey, stands in a corner
watching the scene, remote and absorbed in his
own visions. His sober figure forms a contrast
to the glowing blue and scarlet robes of the
Gonfaloniere of Florence riding forth to do
honour to the great painter. All about are
children, a lovely procession strewing gilliflowers

28 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

under the feet of the artist, of the dignitaries of
the Church preceding him, of the citizens follow-
ing. It is all Italy triumphant because a work
of beauty has been accomplished and the tram-
mels of Byzantine art have been loosened.

The picture was almost late for exhibition in
London... When the last day for sending it off
had come, the colour was not dry. Leighton in
despair took a large brush, dipped it in mastic
varnish, and rubbed it over the composition ; it
was a desperate measure to take, one that meant
ruin or salvation. The picture went, arrived
safely, and was acclaimed by the academicians.
It occupied almost the whole of one wall. The
attention it attracted was unprecedented. Prince
Albert admired and the Queen bought it for
£600. The critics were bewildered. Here was
a new painter. He did not belong to the pre-
Raphaelite school, nor to the historic school, still
less to the domestic one. They praised the work
with some reservation. ‘‘There cannot be any
question about it, the picture is one of great
power,” said the Atheneum, who, however, does
not give it unmitigated praise, noticing that
‘the touch in parts is broad and masterly, but
in the lesser parts of the roughest character.”
‘‘Broad, bold and vivid, artistic sense, a large
style,” said the Sfectator. ‘‘There is quite
enough in the picture to make Mr. Leighton’s
appearance an event.” From Florence, May
15th, 1855, Mrs. Browning writes: ‘‘Do you
know young Leighton of Rome? If so you will
be glad to hear of the wonderful success of his

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HIS FIRST GREAT PICTURE — 29

icture bought by the Queen and applauded by
he academicians, and he is not twenty-five.”
uskin wrote in (Votes on some of the Principal
wctures exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal
Academy, an appreciative notice of ‘‘a very im-
ortant and very beautiful picture.”! D. G.
Ossetti wrote about it to his friend, Mr.
Hingham. The delight of his parents was
linbounded. His mother was found crying with
oy over a letter she had received from him telling
her of his hour of triumph. His friends in Italy
ejoiced. Among them were the lowly friends to
vhom his triumph brought substantial comfort,

ith whose efforts and disappointments he had
bympathised, were made happy. He spent the
oney he received for his picture in giving them
ommissions.

1 See chapter on ‘‘ The Painter and his Critics.”

CHAPTER TV
DISAPPOINTMENT, STRESS, AND HOLIDAY

The idol of London society—Studio in the Rue Pigalle, Paris
—‘‘ The Power of Music”—Chilling reception—Leighton’s
depression—Holiday time in Italy—Sketches of foliage and
blossoms— Does not exhibit 1857—Two pictures at R.A. 1858
—Praise of the <Atheneu—Friendship with the Pre-
Raphaelites—Visit to Algiers and sketches—Mr. Pepys
Cockerell in the W77eteenth Century—Sketch of lemon tree
—Ruskin’s praise—The Academy of 1859 and 1860—Repose
impossible—Spring spent at Capri—At Bath, painting the
children—John Hanson Walker—His comradeship with his
sister Mrs. Matthews.

HE young man became the idol of London
society. His looks, his charming manners,
his bright and winsome personality, allied to the
fact of his genius, and the recognition of that
genius by royalty, won for him all the favours of
the great world. It seemed for a moment as if
Leighton was allowing himself to be caught in the
meshes of the web spread for him; but he knew
himself, his strength and his weakness, as it is
given to few to know themselves, and he soon
tore himself away from the lionising of the world
of fashion.
He went to Paris, where his family had gone
before, took a studio in the Rue Pigalle, and
began once more the life of discipline and work

30

DISAPPOINTMENT AND HOLIDAY 31

he had lived at Rome. At the French exhibition
the English school was attracting great attention.
M. Chesneau, the illustrious critic, in his book en-
titled Zhe English School of Painting, declared
that to the French it was ‘‘a revelation of a style
and a school, of the very existence of which they
had hitherto had no idea.” To that exhibition
Leighton sent ‘‘The Reconciliation of the Mon-
tagues and the Capulets over the dead bodies of
Romeo and Juliet,” a picture that in many details
carried out the promise given by his ‘‘ Cimabue.”’
It was, however, on ‘‘The Triumph of Music:
Orpheus by the power of his art redeems his wife
from Hades” that he now concentrated his atten-
_ tion. He mingled largely in the artistic society
of which Paris was the centre. ‘‘The name of
Ary Sheffer is the one I remember oftenest
mentioned by him,” says Mrs. Orr, referring to
that period. The splendour of that painter’s
colouring, the religious beauty of his art, appealed
especially to Leighton. He knew Bouguereau,
famous for his sense of style; Ingres, supreme
for line, so that his countrymen called him ‘‘ un
Chinois qui a passé par Athene”; Décamps, the
master of light and shade; and others; but it
was to Robert Fleury, the skilled draughtsman
and master of composition, that he turned for
guidance.

‘The Power of Music” was finished and exhi-
bited in the Royal Academy 1856. It took the
public and the Press by surprise. They were
disappointed ; the criticisms were unfavourable.
Where were the qualities the Cimabue picture

32 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

had led them to hope for? ‘‘ It is anything but a
triumph of art,” wrote the Atheneum. ‘Where
is the last year’s quaint solemnity? Where the
freshness and poetic gravity?” The other papers
ridiculed or ignored it. In the course of a letter,
dated Paris, 1856, Mrs. Browning, writing to
Mrs. Jamieson, says: ‘‘ Leighton has been cut up
unmercifully by the critics, but bears up, Robert
says, not without courage. That you should say
‘his picture looked well,’ was comfort in the
general gloom—though even you don’t give any-
thing yet that can be called an opinion.” The
censure savoured of reaction against the praise
lavished upon the painter’s first picture. One of
the great objections to Leighton’s work was that
Orpheus was represented therein playing a violin,
instead of the traditional lyre. Leighton had
deliberately chosen the instrument that has the
greatest power and range of expression. The old
masters had often chosen it likewise. At the
Nativity we not unfrequently see the angels, bow
in hand, celebrating the praises of the new-born
Lord; and little angels play upon it to the en-
throned Madonna and the Holy Infant. The
picture, for all the detraction of critics, had at
least as much power of thought as was displayed
in the ‘‘ Cimabue.”” The deathly Pluto, grey and
ashen in colour, is an emaciated figure, powerful
only to carry blight and corruption. Persephone
is by his side. Orpheus plays to them with averted
eyes, his fingers twitching, the starting veins re-
vealing the effort he is making. Eurydice draws
towards him out of the dreadful Hades, straining

DISAPPOINTMENT AND HOLIDAY 33

to get to him. The dark and dreary background
is oppressive, and filled with suggestions of evil
and desolate shapes. The young painter failed to
realise his conception of that scene of despair, and
of hope, but there was power and originality in
the attempt.

He suffered from the sense of failure, so hard
to bear in youth. But no adverse criticism
could shake the belief in what he was to do, which
animated him. That intimate conviction would
never be extinguished. Through his life he
suffered from depression, but the depression was
not born of outward circumstances. It came
from a sense of being unable to attain the ideal
that was ever before him; his artist soul was
often sad at the discrepancy that he knew existed
between his conception and his achievement. It
was solitary, for no one could help him to bear the
sense of inadequacy that must be the share of
all those who strive after the expression of a
great thought. ‘‘ With every picture I complete
I follow the funeral of my ideal,” he said one
day to the writer of this memoir. He had been
chatting so brightly, he was apparently so happy
that it seemed as if no cloud rested over his lot,
yet for the moment was revealed the sorrow of
his spirit. That was in the zenith of his fame—
years after this first check in his career.

‘‘The Triumph of Music” was rolled up and
was never shown until after Lord Leighton’s
death, when it was sold to an American; the
sketch of it belongs to Mr. Knowles. He went
back to Italy, where he had spent happy holiday

D

34 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

times, before taking the great step of appearing
before the public. Signor Costa tells us that he
had passed the summer of 1854 at the Baths of
Lucca, and that they had dined together every
day, for Leighton fled from the solitary grandeur
of the hotel at ‘‘ Villa,” and he had suggested
that they should mess together in Signor Costa’s
lodgings. Ah! happy days of wholesome feasts
that Lucrezia, the landlady, cook, and waitress
supplied at almost nominal cost; happy days of
work, of sketching, of dreaming of the great_
pictures to be painted. To Italy he went back
in his day of discouragement, and many of the
drawings preserved in his house are jottings from
the diary of his everyday life of communion
with simple things; exquisite records of the
peaceful time he spent there. A highly finished
drawing of a wreath of vine, and of a vine in
fruit, under which is written, in Leighton’s own
writing, ‘Pomegranate Lucca, Bagni Villa.” A
perfect study of foliage with a butterfly and a bee
minutely pencilled in the margin, bears this
inscription: ‘‘Near Bello Sguardo. Sep./-/56.”
There is a lovingly finished sketch of a cyclamen
(Tivoli, Oct. /56). Pages full of studies of pre-
Raphaelite minuteness exist, and appended to
them are notes in his writing. Such work as
this can only be seen in the portfolios of
Leonardo da Vinci, or of some austere German
painter such as Albert Diirer. It was through
the study lavished on these delicate drawings
that he attained the marvellous quality of style
which so distinguishes his work.

DRAWING IN PENCIL OF FIG LEAVES

DISAPPOINTMENT AND HOLIDAY 35

He did not exhibit in 1857, but he was far from
idle. To that year belongs a picture of Salome,
the daughter of Herodias, which was shown at
the retrospective exhibition in 1897, and which
belongs to Mr. Henry T. Makins. It is a grace- .
ful, small, full-length figure of a girl in white
drapery. Her arms are held above her head,
which is crowned with flowers; behind her is
a girl-musician. Two studies reminiscent of
Algiers were also painted in Paris—‘‘ Pan piping
under the shade of a fig tree,” and ‘‘A Nymph
and Child,” a nude figure of a girl whose only half-
developed curves are exquisitely rendered, and
a small, chubby cupid loosening her sandal. In
1858 he sent to the Royal Academy two pictures :
“The Fisherman and the Syren,” now known as
“The Mermaid.” It belongs to Mrs. Watney,
and has a certain evil and fascinating grace.
The mermaid is clasping the fisherman round
the neck and dragging him down below the
waves. Under it are Goethe’s words :—

‘Half drew she him,
Half sunk he in,
And never more was seen.”

His more important work was a large canvas
of a subject taken from Shakespeare — Count
Paris, accompanied by Friar Laurence, coming to
the house of the Capulets to claim his bride.
He finds Juliet stretched apparently lifeless on
her bed. The tragic beauty of Juliet’s face, the
earnestness and passion of the composition, did
much to restore confidence in the artist whose
first-exhibited picture had called forth such high

36 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

hopes. The Acheneum says: ‘‘ Frederic Leigh-
ton, after a temporary eclipse, struggles again to
light. His heads of Italian women this year are
worthy of a young ‘old master’; anything more ,
feeling, commanding, and coldly beautiful we
have not seen for many a day.”

It was during a visit to London that he
made the friendship of the leaders of the pre-
Raphaelite movement — Millais, Holman Hunt,
Rossetti, Woolner the sculptor-poet. This friend-
ship certainly influenced Leighton’s art, but he
never diverged from his own method, he never
deviated from his manner of starting and going
on with a picture. It was always the same—the
sketch, the figure studies from the nude, the
nude draped, the whole traced on to the large
canvas, the colour scheme decided upon. All
the mental preoccupation, the thought, the
emotional impulse expended on the preparatory
stage; the rest a question of time and labour.
But his friendship with the pre - Raphaelites
strengthened his love of the faithful study of
nature. His sketch-book grew fuller of draw-
ings, the beauty of which are a joy to the eye
and a satisfaction to the artistic craving for
perfection. Precise and delicate outlines in pencil,
so much practised by the French and German
schools, expressed his individuality. Clearness
was the passion of his mind; anything misty,
anything vague was distasteful to him. In 1857
he paid a visit to Algeria, and the drawings
he brought home from that oriental land are
evidences of his love of the definite. Every

DISAPPOINTMENT AND HOLIDAY 37

grace of detail, every sign of character are set
down entirely realised, studied with the austere
and loving care of one of the old masters. We
give some of these studies of Moors and camels,
of sphynx-like-looking women, and of interiors
—drawings that, Mr. Pepys Cockerell wrote in
the (Vineteenth Century, ‘‘are as complete as
if they came from the hand of Leonardo or
Holbein.”

In 1858 he returned to Italy. In the spring
of 1859 he spent some time at Capri, and it
was then that he made the famous study of
a lemon tree (now in the possession of Mr.
Pepys Cockerell) which won the admiration
of Mr. Ruskin. Coupling it with another draw-
ing by Leighton, ‘‘A Byzantium Well,” the
great art critic spoke of ‘‘the integrity of his
application shown in the early drawings, which
determines for you without appeal the question
respecting necessity of delineation as the first
skill of a painter.” It is then that he speaks of
Leighton being so near Correggio in his ideal of
beauty. ‘‘ But you see,” he concludes, referring
again to the lemon tree, ‘‘by what precision of
terminal outline he at first restrained and exalted
his gift of beautiful Vaghezza.” If we study
this pencil sketch we marvel at all that the
pencil can do. The structural quality is finely
wrought out, everything is followed out to its
termination, every leaf is suggested and yet kept
in perspective. The web of form is complete, yet
clear. Leighton has done other sketches as fully
realised as is this one, but it stands as a typical

38 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

example of what a study of foliage and growth
should be.

Leighton showed three pictures at the Academy
of 1859—‘‘ Pavonia,” the half-figure of a dark-
haired girl, her back to the spectator, but her
charming head turned and relieved against pea-
cock’s feathers (this picture belongs to the King) ;
‘©A Roman Lady,” then called ‘‘La Nanna,” in
Italian costume, facing the spectator—a picture
which belongs to Edwin Lawrence, m.p.; and
‘‘Sunny Hours.’’ He painted also ‘‘ Stella,”
‘The Roman Mother,” ‘‘ Giacinta,” and other
sketches ; for he was working unremittingly in
his studio in the Via della Purificazione, paint-
ing heads, aiming at expression—dissatisfied
with himself. He was surrounded by friends
who sought to sustain his courage, who advised
him to be of good hope, to abandon self-
criticism, to rejoice in the spontaneity of his
work. They advised him, Signor Costa tells us,
to keep an hour a day and a day in the week for
rest. But repose was impossible to this alert
spirit. ‘‘ Not even when he slept did he keep
quiet,” says his friend. ‘‘ I remember that when,”
as happened rarely, ‘‘he slept in the train he
moved his mouth as if speaking, shook his
shoulders nervously, and gesticulated. Several
times he has said to me, ‘Now I am going to
sleep; wake me in ten minutes.’ Scarcely had
the ten minutes expired than he awoke himself,
saying: ‘ Well, are you not going to wake me?’”

The spring of 1859 spent at Capri was fruitful
in work of singular seductiveness. The lovely

VIEW FROM THE RUINED THEATRE, JAORMINA, SICILY

DISAPPOINTMENT AND HOLIDAY 39

women, the charming children, the morning sun-
shine, all the pageantry of nature bewildered and
entranced him.

His sketch-book is full of studies from nature,
of the town, on rocky heights with sea in the
distance, of the interior of the houses, of the
loggia and staircase, with the ever-present ocean
in the background. To the Academy exhibition of
1860 he sent a single picture, ‘‘ Capri, Sunrise.”
It is a fine portrayal of Italian landscape seen
under the sirocco. The white houses, the green
vegetation, catch the sulphurous light and glow
dimly with evil radiance. The vigilant spirit that
kept guard over his temperament seems to have
relaxed its rule when he was painting from
nature. There is a spontaneity in his landscape
studies that we miss in his more ambitious
pictures, enhancing the classic charm that seems
a native grace with him. We shall dwell here-
after on the manifold studies that he made of
mountain and valley, of hill and dale, in Scot-
land and in other lands; of Irish bog; of Italian
and Greek ruins and horizons ; of oriental cities ;
of the sea, and of the desert. In all alike we
shall recognise the happy touch of the artist
forgetting his method, chronicling what he sees
without thought of how he does it.

In the summers Leighton went to Bath, where
his family resided. ‘‘He spent his days in studying
landscape in the environs,” says Mrs. Orr. ‘‘ He
painted, also, the country children, who loved him.
His approach was watched for and greeted with
cries and signals. There was one little girl, Mary

40 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

Ann Boldwell, who specially appropriated him.
She would sit on his knee as he painted, dip her
small fingers into his palette and wipe them on
his coat and waistcoat, unreproved.” His delight
in young life gave him the sympathy that enabled
him to catch all its unwary grace; its simple
seriousness ; ‘‘ the witchery and the wonderful-
ness of childhood.”

At Bath he made the acquaintance of John
Hanson Walker’s father. Johnnie was a hand-
some little lad, and Leighton asked permission to
paint him. ‘I was very eager to go,” said Mr.
Walker, speaking of that time of memories.
‘“‘Leighton made the sittings enchanting; he
whistled like a bird; he sang songs for me; he
told me the most wonderful stories. He drew
from me that it was my ambition to be a painter.
He spoke of the difficulty of art and of the splen-
dour of it. Itwas a great sorrow when he went
away to Italy. One day, I remember it so well,
a big crate came to the door, addressed to me. I
could not think what it was and from whom it
came. But when it was opened the mystery was
cleared up. There were all the treasures I longed
for: plaster casts of heads, hands, and feet.
There were drawing-paper and drawing-boards,
pencils and chalk, everything a boy could want
whose longing was to be an artist. It all came
from Leighton, who had carried in his mind my
wish to be a painter. When he came to Bath, the
following year, I sat for him again, and I would
bring him my drawings. He corrected them and
guided me. He made me come to his studio and

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STUDY OF A HEAD

DISAPPOINTMENT AND HOLIDAY 41

work under him. I used to accompany him in the
country and watch him painting the beautiful
children about. I remember one Sunday he asked
me to sit for him ; but I was sure my father would
“not wish me to do so on that day. I told this to
Leighton. Far from being vexed at my refusal,
he said cheerily, ‘Well, we shall go for a drive
instead,’ and we drove into the country. It was a
practice we continued during his stay at Bath.
When he settled in London he advised me to
come up to try for the Academy schools. I would
work at his studio, and, when the time came, I
sent up my drawing; it passed, and I became a
‘Royal Academy pupil.”

Of John Hanson Walker, Leighton painted
many studies. One, dated 1861, was bought by
the late Queen. It showed a three-quarter length
of a boy in a smock-frock, holding a shepherd’s

i pipe. A farmyard formed the background. The

face of the child is beautiful in its freshness and

light.
‘““He was the truest friend I ever had,” went
on Mr, Walker. ‘‘I continued to work at his

studio, and he got me commissions for copy-
ing pictures at the South Kensington Museum
and at the National Gallery. I was engaged,
but I was too poor to marry. One day that I
was sitting for Leighton I told him of my en-
gagement. He became greatly interested. He
questioned me about my prospects. He would
not hear of my marriage being put off. ‘You
must work,’ he said, ‘and I shall help you to get
commissions.’ He did help me; and when I

zw FREDERIC LEIGHTON

the two ends meet. ‘‘He never contracted a
, debt, however,” says Mrs. Orr, ‘‘he never drank,
he never smoked, then or afterwards, except
on social occasions. I remember he wrote to
my father asking him for an increase of the
allowance made to him. It was such a charm-
ing letter. ‘I never take a cab,’ he said, ‘if
I possibly can help it, but it is sometimes difficult
in evening dress to go in an omnibus or on foot.
I never give dinner-parties or anything costly
in return for the many invitations I receive and
accept.’” Elegant, even fashionable, he was
admirably fitted for society. In Lothazr, Disraeli
has painted him the artist gifted with every
social grace. His conversation was singularly
brilliant, and already it gave evidence of the
‘*cosmopolitanism,” which is the epithet given
to it by a late writer in the Cornhill Magazine.
Amidst incessant work he found time to read
or to be read to, and thus to keep himself in
touch with subjects that interested the world.
He could hold his own against the most noted
talkers of the day, expressing himself with that
instinctive choice of the right word that gave
charm to his most casual utterances. In his dis-
courses and public speeches we are aware of the
poise of the sentence and of the cultured grace
of the phrase, a sense of preparation belongs to
them which takes away from the spontaneity
which is the crowning grace of good speaking ;
and we think of Punch’s cartoon representing
him as President trying to invent beautiful new
words for his speech. But in conversation this

IN LONDON 4%

sense of preparation was absent. He spoke
clearly, in a somewhat high-pitched key, and he
kept the attention of his hearers wakeful by the
wit and aptness with-which he expressed himself.
‘*T remember,” said Mr. Aitchison, ‘‘a summer
afternoon that we spent together with Mason and
Murch, on the terrace of the Crystal Palace,
when he spoke freely, criticising books, artists,
philosophy, and the methods of teaching. I
remember he deplored the waste of time to
students of making large chalk studies, when
everything that was wanted could be shown on
a sheet of smooth paper, seven inches high,
with a hard pencil.” It was an unforgettable
afternoon, and the memory of that unrestrained
and brilliant talk still lingers in the mind of one
whose long life contains many experiences. ‘‘ In
later years,” continued Mr. Aitchison, ‘‘ when he
was made an R.A., he grew more guarded in
speech, in his criticisms especially, for everything
he said found its way into the papers.” It was
by this charm of conversation and by the sunny
and genial pleasantness of his manner that he
gathered the social world around him, and that
his studio grew more and more crowded with the
representatives of art, literature, and of the
great world. All his old friends from Rome
came there, Thackeray, the Brownings, the
Kembles, Costa, and many others. His invari-
able kindness and brightness made him loved by
all young people, who felt at ease in his presence.
‘That is why everybody likes Fay,” said a
young girl, speaking of him one day, giving

46 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

him the name by which he was known by his
intimates. His goodness of heart was especially
drawn out by the young. Mr. Walker told me
how one day he had spoken to Leighton of a
youth of talent, a student of the Royal Academy,
who was in great straits. Leighton walked to
a drawer and took out a five-pound note. ‘‘ Give
that to him,” he said, ‘‘and ask him to make me
a little sketch in exchange.” This was at a time
when five-pound notes were the very reverse of
plentiful with him. The gift, the kind message,
the effort he made to find work for this youth
gave the latter the courage of heart that enabled
bim to turn the bad corner.

In 1861 he exhibited a portrait of Mrs. Suther-
land Orr. The classic features, so like his own
in their refinement, are surrounded by the som-
breness of a mourning that brings out all their
fair statuesqueness. It is a portrait that in its
directness and sincerity, its dependence for effect
upon the essential charm of femininity, is a fine
example of his art as a portraitist. To that year
also belongs a portrait of John Hanson Walker.
At the R.A. exhibition were shown ‘‘ Paolo and

Francesca,” at the moment when the fatal kiss
was given—

“‘La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante” ;

‘‘A Dream,” a work that evoked some severe
criticism, but that remains always interesting as
the first clear sign Leighton gave of a decora-
tive faculty ; a charming landscape of ‘‘Capri-
Paganos”’; and the ‘‘ Lieder ohne Worte.” This

IN LONDON 47

picture, containing much that is delicate and
lovely in the poise of the girl’s head, in the
blue of her dress, and in the wistful expression
| of her dreamy eyes, looking out of the canvas,
-was badly hung. It has much of that evanescent
charm of youth which Leighton knew how to
catch and render. The hanging of ‘‘ The Dream ”’
and of this last picture called forth a good deal of
| discussion. Rossetti mentions it in a letter to
William Allingham on May ioth, 1861. ‘‘ Leigh-
ton might, as you say, have made a burst had
not his pictures been ill-placed mostly. The only
very good one, ‘Lieder ohne Worte,’ is the only
instance of very striking unfairness in the place.”
In the following year no less than six pictures
were shown at the Academy. The ‘‘ Odalisque”’
has kept its place among the most popular work
| of the artist. For sensuous grace and purity of
; line and colour it ranks among his most character-
| istic renderings of feminine loveliness. A fair
| girl is standing by the side of a piece of water.
Over the top of the low wall against which she
} leans we see an eastern garden filled with fruit
} and flowers. The heights beyond are crowned
} with minarets. Her beautiful head, covered with
| rich drapery, rests upon her right arm; a splendid
eastern scarf girdles the loose white draperies of
j her dress. In her left hand she holds a peacock
f fan. Her attitude, her expression of serene
| languor is in keeping with the atmosphere of
summer noon that pervades the picture; while
the swan at her feet is ruffling its feathers, and
brings a touch of disturbed life into a composition

48 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

of almost excessive grace. ‘‘ Michael Angelo
nursing his Servant, » of which we have a sketch
at Leighton House, is a picture of more human
and pathetic interest than we are accustomed to
look for in the work of a painter devoted to the
claims of beauty. ‘‘The Star of Bethlehem,”
which was also shown at the retrospective
exhibition of 1897, is very interesting as showing
Leighton’s naturally religious spirit expressed in
art. One of the Magi, standing on the terraced
roof of his house, has taken off his crown as
he looks upwards into the sky where a star is
shining. The new luminary sheds a peculiar
light over the sky and earth. Below lies the
road he has just trod, where a revel is going on.
The picture is in the possession of T. B. Holmes,
Esq. ‘‘ Duett,” “Sea Echoes,<. ** Sisters, sams
‘Rustic Music” also belong to this year. The
pictures attracted more attention than had been
vouchsafed to his work since he had shown the
great picture ‘‘Cimabue” that raised such high:
hopes. In a letter to his sister Mrs. Matthews,
dated May r2th, 1862, he says: ‘‘ My pictures
have had more than their usual success this
year.”

He was going out very much, and music was
the great recreation that he gave to himself; it
did much to brighten his life of toil and dreams.
In a letter to the same sister he says :—

‘*] thought of you a few nigh’ ago ata oe
party at the Sartoris, the chief guests being
Hallé, Joachim, and Stephen Heller, who dined
there en petit comité and played in the evening.

RUSTIC MUSIC

IN LONDON 49

I thought how you would have enjoyed being
there. Do you know. Joachim’s playing? I
think it out and away the greatest instrumental
performance I have ever heard. He is a charm-
ing, cordial, simple fellow, as well as a great
artist. When you come to England I must find
an opportunity of introducing you to him. Heller
also is nice. He is not by way of being a pianist
at all, but it is interesting to hear him play his
own things.”

The following year was the last in which he
exhibited work at the R.A. as an_ outsider.
The dramatic picture ‘‘Jezebel and Ahab, met
at the entrance to Naboth’s vineyard by Elijah
the Tishbite, who asks them, ‘Hast thou
killed and also taken possession?’” was shown
that year; ‘‘An Italian Crossbow-Man”; and
**Eucharis,” a picture of ‘‘ luxurious exquisite-
ness,” as Mr. William Rossetti calls it. It is a
half-length figure of a young girl in white drapery,
with a basket of, fruit on her head. There was
also a delightful little picture of two girls feeding
peacocks. These two pictures belong to that
array of girls which forms a procession of
youthful loveliness, coming from all nations,
examples of which were exhibited by Leighton
every year. To them we shall refer later.
Their dream-like figures, swathed in the rhythmic
lines of flowing draperies, the wax-like, almost
porcelain charm of their complexions, the mass
of perfect detail gathered round them, are all the
expression of an art that existed for the creation
of beauty. They all lack fire; they are all too

E

50 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

good for the wear and tear of everyday life.
We feel that they are not creatures of this world,
but we are nevertheless thankful for their remote
suggestiveness.

To this time belongs also the great series of
illustrations of Roviote and of Dalziel’s Bible
Gallery. The art of illustration in England had
reached its brilliant noontide. Millais, Fred
Walker, Leighton, vied with each other in the
pages of the CornfAzll, under the unique editorship
of Mr. Thackeray. Leighton’s knowledge of the
Italy of the Renaissance fitted him to illustrate a
novel dealing with the public and private life of
those days. To look over the drawings of Romola
is to see embodied in tangible form the wonderful
learning and the witchery of George Eliot’s
creations. Here is the stately maiden Romola
reading to her blind father. There is the picture
of Tito, of the beautiful face, among the people
gathered in the barber’s shop. Here, again, is
pretty Tessa, who has fallen asleep as she rocks
the cradle in which her first-born is slumbering ;
the delineation of lovely, foolish Tessa, playing
at life, as a child plays at it, has drawn forth
Leighton’s tenderest touches. Further on, in her
statuesque beauty, we see Romola drifting away
in a boat over the yellow waters of the Tiber,
under the shadow of the frowning mountains. ‘‘A
Week in a French Country House,” by his friend
Mrs. Sartoris, that was published in the CornAzil
Magazine, was also illustrated by his pencil, and
the characters he draws live for us in that de-
lightful story. We also follow, in the Cornhzll

IN LONDON 51

Magazine, the meditations of Pan by the reed-
covered river, to the lilt of Mrs. Browning’s
words. The illustrations to Dalziel’s Bible Gallery
mark the highest point to which the splendid
period of English illustration reached. To this
gallery Leighton contributed nine compositions.
The Bzble Gallery has been reissued in popular
form by the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, and it is easy therein to become
acquainted with Leighton’s work. There is the
Death of Abel, and Cain flying before the silent
reproach of his dead brother’s face; there is the
stately and solitary figure of Moses standing
on Pisgah’s height, viewing the promised land.
Samson slaying the Lion,—not the stately beast
we are accustomed to see in our zoological
gardens, but an Asiatic lion, smaller than the
African one; Samson carrying the Gates, his
face and the upper part of his figure lost in deep
shadow; Abraham and the Angel, the heavenly
messenger stopping the father in the act of slay-
ing his well-beloved son; the idyll of Eliezer
and Rebecca at the Well; the passing tragedy
of the first-born of Israel; the Spies’ Escape;
and Samson at the Mill ;—these are the subjects
of the nine magnificent drawings that bear Leigh-
ton’s signature. We might also mention the
charming frontispiece of a little book of fairy
tales; and a drawing, ‘‘ A Contrast,” intended to
suggest a model in his decrepitude looking at his
own sculptured form in its adorable adolescence,
these complete, as far as I know, the list of
Leighton’s contributions to the art of illustration.

52 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

Some who have won success in this art believe
that it is by illustrations that he would have
reached his highest fame.

Before leaving this part of his life we must
notice a visit that Leighton paid in 1863 to
George Mason. Their friendship had begun in
Rome, but the years that had brought success to
Leighton had brought nothing but discourage-
ment to Mason. He had come to England in
1856 to marry the girl to whom he was engaged,
and he had settled down at Wetley Abbey, a
half-ruined manor house that belonged to him.
After the sunshine of Italy the grey and humid
effects of the English country said nothing to
him. He was blind to the idyllic suggestions
they contained. The rustics about him were a
refined race ; to them belonged a certain classic
simplicity of line and expression; but Mason
lived among them almost as poor as they were,
overburdened with children, depressed and un-
happy. Leighton heard of his straits and came
down to him, sunshiny, genial, affectionate. He
took him for a tour through the Black Country.
Lord Rosebery has in his possession a little
sketch-book full of drawings, plans of future
pictures, that he made for his friend to paint. -
The rustic scenes have the poetry and feeling
which Mason knew how to depict. Leighton
raised his spirits, gave him hope, purpose,
and the spiritual support that a friend alone
can give, inspiring him with new life. He
lent Mason also substantial help, advancing
money with rare delicacy on the commissions he

IN LONDON 53

gave him, and got his friends to give him.
Costa tells us that he wrote asking him to go
down to see Mason. From that time Leighton
never abandoned the sensitive man, so easily
depressed, so easily moved to joy; he was
always there to give courage, advice, praise.
When Mason died in 1872, leaving his wife and
several children unprovided for, Leighton ar-
ranged a sale of all his pictures and of all his
effects, and from the proceeds obtained for them
an income of £600 a year. Writing to Mrs.
Matthews at the time, he says: ‘‘ Poor Mason’s
death has been a great shock to me, though
indeed I should have been prepared for it at any
time. His loss is quite irreparable for English
art, for he stood entirely alone in his especial
charm, and he was one of the most lovable of
men besides.”

CHAPTER VI
ASSOCIATE OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY

Elected A.R.A.—Travels in foreign lands— Exhibition of
sketches in Royal Society of British Artists—Pictures at
the R.A. 1864-5—The modern spirit in classic setting—
Pictures at the R.A. 1866—‘‘The Syracusan Bride”—A
Saturday morning at the studio—The Lyndhurst fresco—
“‘Venus disrobing for her bath,” 1867—First rumours of
criticism against his waxen flesh tints—‘‘The Death of
Ariadne” and other pictures of 1868.

HE was elected A.R.A. in 1864, entering thus
into the representative body of English
artists. Henceforth there was to be no more
doubt as to his pictures being accepted, no more
fear as to how they were to be hung. It was
about this time he began the series of travels in
foreign lands that filled his autumn holidays,
when he visited Rhodes, Cairo, Damascus, Con-
stantinople, and out-of-the-way places in Turkey;
when he travelled over the Holy Land, Spain,
Egypt, up the Nile and to the skirts of the
desert. He did not forget our Highlands in
Scotland, nor the stretches of sombre spaces in
Ireland. .‘‘And wherever he went,” said Mr.
Aitchison, ‘‘he always contrived to return to
Italy and rest awhile in Perugia.” It was in
these solitary rambles through strange places

SINVTIVS 4O Ava

ASSOCIATE OF ROYAL ACADEMY 55

that Leighton fed and refreshed his instinct for
beauty that was an ever-present joy to him.
He would retire from society during this time,
indulge in solitude, and become one with the joy
of nature. His sketches give evidence of the
wealth and variety of his observation. Some-
times it is only the line of a mountain range in
pencil, sometimes it is the elaborate representa-
tion of an effect or of a scene—a ruined archway,
a flowering garden. The sketches in oil show
that in Leighton we lost a great landscape
painter. The feeling for nature, the strong
sense of a personal impression they give, their
spontaneity, their variety of effects are conveyed
with simple mastery. Over one hundred and
thirty of these oil sketches were exhibited in
Suffolk Street at the Royal Society of British
Artists—all faithful portraits of the places he had
seen, of the impressions he had received. There
were sketches of moorland purple with heather
full of the grave poetry of autumn; effects of
cloud, of light and shade; interiors of ruined
mosques ; olive groves silvery in the light; bits
of shore; studies of churches and palaces in
Spain, in Greece ; gardens in Palestine ; scenes in
his beloved Italy, as well as in our England;
cataracts of the Nile; streets in medieval cities ;
remains of classic architecture; Lindos, where
the ships rode at anchor that Homer sang. In
sun and moon shine, at sunrise and sunset, by
starlight and noonday, in storm and calm, the
watchful painter was at work, seeing, rejoicing,
laying hold of Nature in her different aspects,

56 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

painting her with sure and certain touches.
Leighton told Sir Wyke Bayliss ‘‘that his pas-
sion had always been for landscape, and that he
still hoped to paint an English cottage before he
died.”

These beautiful sketches were to serve as the
backgrounds to his elaborate pictures. I think
we see Leighton at his best in these studies; we
see him without preparation simply approaching
the feast of beauty that Nature daily spreads for
those who love her. All his learning, all his
anxiety to do justice to his great art are laid
aside. It is the child, as it were, rejoicing, play-
ing with the joy of his surroundings.

Meanwhile he was sending to the Royal
Academy pictures that yearly added to his fame,
until in 1869 he was elected a Royal Academician.
We shall mention only the most notable of the
works he executed during these five years. The
complete list and their dates will be found in the
Appendix. In 1864 he showed perhaps one of
the most noticeable he ever painted, ‘Dante in
Captivity.” It has some of the qualities of his
fresco work. It is admirable for the balancing
of the groups, for the dignity of the conception,
and for the gravity of the sentiment with which
itis imbued. The poet is descending the stairs
of the Can Grande at Verona. He is dressed in
sober grey, his draperies contrasting with the
richly coloured garments of a gay company pre-
paring for a revel. A little child, wreathed with
flowers, is dragging along the floor a garland of
bay leaves, and looks up with eyes full of glad-

SYNOH NAGTOD

ASSOCIATE OF ROYAL ACADEMY 57

ness and innocence into the poet’s face. One or
two watch Dante with interest, but the majority
jeer and mock at him, saluting him with ex-
aggerated politeness. It is a thoughtful com-
position nobly worked out in all its parts.
The picture of ‘‘Orpheus and Eurydice” was
also exhibited that year. To it were attached
Browning’s impassioned lines, written by the poet
purposely for it. Orpheus is turning his head
away as Eurydice, a sweet young girl, pleads
with him to look at her. The most popular
picture was ‘‘ Golden Hours,” full of the romance
of life. Against a golden background a musician,
whose refined and sensitive face brings reminis-
cences of the divine head, as Francia painted it,
is playing upon a spinet. Over it leans a woman
listening ; her white dress is embroidered with
flowers, the light catches her red-gold hair, her
left beautiful ear. It is an idyll of love and
music.

In 1865 came the picture of ‘‘ David.” The
psalmist is seen, sunk in a profound reverie, seated
upon the housetop. The great hills encompass
the horizon. Against the pearly sky two doves
are flying, and under the picture is inscribed the
cry of David—‘“‘ Oh that I had wings like a dove!
for then would I fly away, and be at rest.” The
large handling of the drapery, the simplicity of
the composition, are in accord with Leighton’s
ideal of biblical grandeur. The picture provoked
some hostile criticism; but it is a memorable
work nevertheless. Another picture at the Royal
Academy of that year, ‘‘ Helen of Troy,” shows

58 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

how wide was the range of Leighton’s subjects.
Helen steps along the ramparts of Troy, having
been bidden by Iris to see the general truce,
pending the duel between Paris and Menelaus, of
which she is to be the prize. The paragon of
beauty, followed by two attendants, her face in
shadow, her hair alight, her shoulders catching
the glow, comes towards us. The figure has
charm, but it is not the Helen we dream of. It
is an English girl of modern times dressed in
classic robes. M. Charles Blanc, speaking of
another picture, remarks that never will English
painters be anything but ‘‘ British in the first
place.” This picture shows Leighton a ‘‘modern,”
using classicism as his mode of expression. He
has chosen Homeric times for his setting, but it
is the present that he paints. Helen has the
essentially discreet, composed, and unrevealing
air of a maiden of to-day. ‘‘St. Mark,” ‘‘ The
Widow’s Prayer,” ‘‘Mother and Child,” were the
three remaining canvases.

In 1866 came his ideal processional picture:
‘‘The Syracusan bride leading wild beasts to the
Temple of Diana,” reminding those who saw it of
the noble ‘‘ Cimabue ” that first marked his talent.
It is a radiant composition ; ‘‘an excursion,” says
Charles Blanc, in his book Les Artistes de mon
Temps, ‘‘into the realm of style.” The French
critic suggests, however, that the young Sicilian
damsels leading the wild beasts dwell in the
West End of London—a true statement, for
Leighton’s types are almost all English, and of
modern times. The bride herself leads a lioness,

ASSOCIATE OF ROYAL ACADEMY 59

and is followed by a train of fair girls leading
wild beasts. The denizens of the forest are gentle-
natured creatures, suggesting the studio, and
their tameness is in harmony with their lovely
classic leaders. The groups are detached against
_white marble; pearly clouds float above them;
they are approaching the doors of the temple,
with its guardian statue of Diana. The picture is
a vision of fair forms and of ideal harmonies of
colour, a vision of light and delicate tones, white
clouds and white marble, lovely girls clad in
draperies that form ideal passages of colour, wild
beasts growing tame under the influence of so
much beauty.

‘* The Painter's Honeymoon” and a portrait of
_ Mrs. James Guthrie belonged to this year’s work.

‘* He used also to go on Saturdays,” said Mr.
Aitchison, ‘‘to Lyndhurst, to paint his fresco of
the Wise and Foolish Virgins, as an altar-piece in
the beautiful church there. I remember well how
Saturday morning was an off time with him. I
would come to speak to him, and consult with
him about the house I was building for him. I
remember one Saturday morning in particular
Browning was there. He had come by invitation,
to model a hand under Leighton’s supervision.
It was Browning’s delight to dabble with clay,
and Leighton had invited him to come on Satur-
days and he would advise him. While we were
there his servant man, a Roumanian I think he
was—he could not speak a word of English—came
in to say that someone had called. This distressed
Leighton, who dedicated his Sundays to receiving

60 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

the outer world ; and it was against his spirit of
order to infringe upon a rule once made. It also
broke into the middle of his engagements. Still,

he went downstairs to receive his visitor. When

he came up, Browning said, ‘Of what nationality
is your servant—what language do you and he
speak together? I fancied I detected a word here
and there, but otherwise I was at sea.’ ‘Ah!
the jargon is a patois,’ answered Leighton, laugh-
ing; ‘he can speak nothing else, and I have
learnt to talk it.’ He set off immediately after for
Lyndhurst.

The fresco in the church is a very fine example
of mural decoration. It has beauty, sincerity of
feeling, nobility of line and of colour. The figures
are over life-size. In the centre stands the Bride-
groom, clad in white, carrying a bunch of lilies in
His left hand, while He extends the right to the
foremost of the wise virgins. Angels stand on
either side, hailing the one group, repelling the
other. The foolish virgins sink down in sorrow.
On the extreme right is a kneeling figure of
Prayer. In the interior, a figure of Vigil is trim-
ming a lamp. A mixture of copal varnish, wax,
resin, and oil, was the medium with which this
work was painted. The next year he exhibited at
the Royal Academy ‘‘ Venus disrobing for her
Bath,” a picture which shows a wonderful skill in
depicting the human form, and which also reveals
some of Leighton’s limitations, and the modern-
ity of his outlook. It is now that we hear the
first rumour of protest from critics against the
waxen hues of his flesh painting. The Art Journal

ASSOCIATE OF ROYAL ACADEMY 61

complains that it is ‘‘a pale, silvery hue, not as
white as marble, not so life-glowing as flesh.” This
was a deliberately chosen scheme by Leighton,
and all the surrounding tints form harmonies with
it. This Venus is not a goddess, but a charming
English lady ready to step into her bath. The face
is delicate and refined, it has a look of intellect ;
but we cannot associate her with the Venus of
Homer, of Phidias, or Praxiteles. The colour is
ideal in its effect, and as such, is in harmony with an
ideal subject. It is not too closely to be referred
to the natural. ‘‘The Pastoral” is a picture of
two figures, a boy and a girl—he is teaching her to
play the pipe—a sweet and simple theme, wrought
out among surrounding's of idyllic freshness.

In the following year, 1868, appeared the
beautiful Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus and
watching for his return until Artemis puts an
end to her sad vigil. It is a very fine example of
his management of line. The single figure is
lying in death, but death has not disfigured her,
the eyes are closed, the lips slightly parted, one
beautiful arm is stretched on a neighbouring
rock, she lies on a pall of green, her white
draperies closing around her. It is a picture
very tender in its inspiration. Besides this paint-
ing was a lovely representation of ‘‘ Actea,” one
of the bright Nereides, lying on white drapery on
the shore. Also a small circular picture of Acme
and Septimius, lovers reclining on a marble
bench in a garden.

‘Upon his eyes she dropped a kiss,
Intoxicating him with bliss.”’

62 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

It proved the most popular of that year’s work.
A scriptural theme, ‘‘ Jonathan’s token to David,”
showing Jonathan standing by the stone, Ezel
looking out into the field on his right. It was
treated with the same refinement and grace, but
it needed more ruggedness of touch to express
the Old Testament spirit. Leighton was on the
eve of being elected a full member of the Royal
Academy. Before entering upon the appreciation
of his work as such, let us follow him in his diary
up the Nile.

About this time also he was enrolled in the
Artists’ Volunteer Corps. That volunteer work
was one of his great feats ; one of the important
aspects of his many-sided energy. He studied the
art of war (tactics and strategy) along with his
other work, and eventually brought his regiment
to an important position among London battalions.

« SOGAWNA UNV SAAHIMO,, ONILNIVA AHL NO NOISAG AIOHM ANV SAUNOI sO salqnis

CHAPTER VII
EXTRACTS FROM LEIGHTON’S JOURNAL

Up the Nile to Phyle, 1868—First day’s journey—Sunsets
over the Nile—Phyle—Full moon at Phyle—Fright. of
the crew at the sight of the great cataract—Pictures in
words—‘‘ Little Fatima”—‘‘ The Slinger”—A deserted
garden—About the basil plant—A city of doves—Dancing
girls and festivals—A French Egyptologist—Procession of
women and girls—A love song.

JT ORD LEIGHTON’S sisters have lent me

the journal Leighton kept when he went
up the Nile to Phylez, in October, 1868. The
Viceroy had offered his steamer to the illustrious
English artist, and he travelled leisurely and in
comfort up the mysterious river, stopping where
he liked, sketching and taking notes. Sunsets,
moonlight, the glowing river, deserted gardens,
ruins, festivals, strange folk and little children,
all are here. I shall let him speak for himself.
Would that I could give the journal as it stands,
and let him reveal his rare nature with his own
inimitable touch!

‘October 14th, 1868. The first day’s journey
up the Nile is enchanting, and I enjoyed it
thoroughly. The sky was bright but tempered
by a glimmering haze which produced the love-
liest effects ; those of the early morning were the

63

64 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

most striking. The course of the river being
nearly due north the western bank was glowing
in varied sunny lights, the other seemed made up
of shadowy veils of gauze fainting gradually
towards the horizon. The boats that passed on
the left, dark in the blaze of light, looked, with
their outspread wings, like large moths of dusky
brown; those on the right shone against the
violet sky like gilded ivory. The keynote of
this landscape is a soft, varied, fawn-coloured
brown, than which nothing could take more
gracefully the warm glow of sunlight or the
cool purple mystery of shadow; the latter per-
haps especially, deep and powerful near the eye
(the local brown slightly overruling the violet),
but fading as it recedes into tints exquisitely
vague and so faint that they seem rather to be-
long to the sky than to the earth. At this time
of the year the broad coffee-coloured sweep of
the river is bordered on either side by a fillet of
green of the most extraordinary vivacity, but
redeemed from any hint of crudity by the golden
light which inundates it. The brightest green is
that of the indian corn—the softest and most
luminous that of an exquisite grass, tall as
pampas (perhaps it is a kind of pampas, I have
not seen it‘close yet), and like it crowned with a
beautiful plumelike bloom of the most delicate
hue; seen against a dark shady bank, and with ©
the sun shining through it, it shimmered with the
sheen of gossamer.”

‘“The shape of the hill and mountains is very
peculiar and striking. It gives the idea of a

IdADA ‘LAOISSY ‘SHINOL aO ALIO

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL 6s

chopping sea of sand thrown up into abrupt
peaks, and then uniformly truncated by a sweep
of a vast scythe, sweeping everything from
horizon to horizon. Here and there a little peak,
_ too low to be embraced in the general decapita-
tion, raises its head amongst innumerable table-
lands, and gives great value and relief to the
general outline.”

The sunsets up the Nile are a source of ever-
renewed delight. ‘‘ The sunset before reaching
Kolo’sana was magnificent, like a sunset at sea,
almost as grand in its simplicity; and in the
afterglow, the distant rolling sand tracks were
the most mysterious tints, ‘faint, glimmering,

29)

uncanny.
_ Here is a page that literally glows with the
departing sun of the East. ‘‘ A wonderful sunset

again this evening. The western bank, like
yesterday, was low and brown and green; but,
unlike yesterday, it was alive with the sweet
clamours of many birds. On the eastern side
the long wall of rock which seems to enclose the
whole length of the valley of the Nile came flush,
or almost flush to the water’s edge, and with
what an intense glory it glowed! The great
| hills seemed clad in burnished armour of gold
fringed and girt below with green and dark
purple, but the smooth face of the water was
like copper burnished and inlaid with sapphire.
‘“‘T sat in the long gloaming enjoying the soft,
warm, supple air, and watching the tints gradually
change and die round the sweep of the horizon
and across the immense mirror of the Nile as

F

66 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

broad as a lake. It was enchanting to watch the
subtle gradations by which the tawny orange
tones that glowed like embers in the west passed
through strange golden-browns to uncertain
gloomy violet and finally to the hot indigo of
the eastern sky, where some lingering afterglow
still flushed the dusky hills. And still more
enchanting to watch the same tones on the un-
ruffed expanse of the water, slightly tempered
by its colour and subdued to greater mystery.
A solemn peace was over everything. Occasion-
ally a boat drifted slowly past with outspread
wings, in colour like an opal or lapis lazuli, and
then vanished. It was a thing to remember.”
Towards the end of October he writes: ‘‘ The
scenery about Phyle has been spoken of as
Paradise. I never saw anything less like my
notion of Paradise, and so far, therefore, I am
disappointed. Original and strange it is in a
high degree. It is, in fact, exactly like the valley
of which I spoke a little further back, only that
the hills are four times as high, and water takes
the place of land; the same breaking up of the
rocks into a myriad fragments, putting all
grandeur and massiveness of forms out of the
question, and, with the exception of a few palm ~
trees and a sycamore or two, the same barren-.
ness. Looking up in the direction of the Wady
Halfa the mountains appear to grow finer in out-
line, and a tract of very yellow sand amongst
their highest crests is striking and original —
gold dust in a cup of lapis lazuli. With the
island itself and its beautiful group of temples

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL = 67

it is impossible not to be delighted. Nothing
could be more fantastic or more stately than the
manner in which it rises out of the bosom of the
river, like a vast ship, surrounded as it is on all
sides by a high wall, sheer from the water to
the level on which the temples stand. One hall
in the main temple, and one only shows still a
sufficient amount of colour to give a very good
idea of what the effect must have been origin-
ally ; the green and blue capitals must have been
very lovely. It is needless to say here and else-
where travellers have left by hundreds lasting
memorials of their brutality in the shapes of
names and dates drawn, painted, scratched, or
cut on every wall, so that the eye finds no rest

from them. This strange and ineffably vulgar

mania is as old as the world, and the tombs of
the kings at Thebes are scrawled over with
inscriptions left there by Greek and Roman
visitors. I shall return to Phyle shortly to
make a sketch or two—Insha Allah. Here at
last I have found that absolutely clear crystalline
atmosphere of which I had so often heard. I
own it is not pleasing to me. A sky of burnished
steel over a land of burning granite would no
doubt be grand if the outlines of the granite
were fine, but they are not. Meanwhile, perspec-
tive is abolished; everything is equally and
obtrusively near, and I sadly miss the soft
mysterious veils and pleasant doubts of distance
that enchant one in other lands.”

Still Phile grows upon him. November ist he
writes: ‘‘ Having heard much of the beauty of

68 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

the full moon at Phyle, timed my visit to see
it, and was entirely delighted. The light was so
brilliant that one could read with ease, but at
the same time so soft, so rich, and so mellow
that one seemed not to see the night but to
be dreaming of the day. The Arabs say of a
fine night, “It is a night like milk,’ but there
is more of amber than of milk in the nights
of Phyle. The rising of the moon last night
was the first thing of the sort I ever saw; the
disc was perfectly golden, not as in a mist, but
set sharp and clear in the sky, and exactly like
the sun, except that you could look at it without
pain to the eyes. The effect of this effulgent
light on the shoulder of the hill was magical.
The last hour of the afternoon I spent in stroll-
ing about the villages, which are picturesque.
The cottages are four small roofless walls built
of the usual sunburnt brick and coated with
mud; but the doorways are always highly deco-
rated- with painted geometrical devices which in
the mass of sober brown have a bape cheerful
and artistic effect.’

The fright of the crew at the sight of the great
cataract amused him not a little. ‘‘As we got
within sight of the big cataract and the stranded
ship, Hosseyn loudly exhorted all the crew to
pray to the prophet and all the saints who have
their shrines on the heights of Assouant to see
them safely through the danger. The invitation
was loudly responded to, and everybody who had
not to pull held up his hands and prayed with
great fervour, which was very pretty, and done

|
:
:

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL — 69

with the dignified simplicity which always accom-
panies an Arab’s devotions ; but it was certainly
disproportionate to the emergency. When we had
danced up and down (or rather down and up)

_ three or four times I had the curiosity to look

about for the sailor and waiter I had brought
with me from the steamer; they were respec-
tively green and yellow in their unfeigned terror!”

Pictures he sees at every turn. Here is one in
words that might well be the original of one
of his painted sketches. ‘‘This was also the
last day of the Moolid, and high time too. I
met in the morning, in a narrow street, a pro-
cession of sailors carrying a boat, which they
were about to deposit in the tomb of Theykli,

‘in whose honour the Moolid is held, and whose

name they were loudly invoking. In front, drums
and flags, and cowwasses firing guns; behind,
in front, everywhere, a host of most paintable
ragamuffins enjoying the fuss; above the brown
housetops dark blue figures of women huddled,
peering at the procession; over them a blue sky,
with a minaret standing against it, a palm tree,
some doves. There was the picture; it was
charming.”

And here is the portrait of little Fatima. ‘‘A
frequent companion in my work is my little friend
Fatima, a sweet, small child of about five, with a
bright face and two rows of the brightest teeth
ever seen. She squats down snugly by my side,
sometimes looking at the picture, sometimes at
the painter, most often at the paint-box at which
she twiddles silently; sometimes she pensively

70 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

draws patterns with a little brown finger on my
dusty boots. I remember at Rhodes, last year,
a host of little girls used to watch me sketching
in the street of the Knights ; but the little Turks
were not so nice as Fatima, the little Arab—some
used to giggle and some used to frown at the
Djiaover; but one very chatty young lady of
about six, with the manners and graces of six-
teen, would exclaim in a little fluty voice, ‘Wash-
allah! Washallah! Beautiful indeed! Nobody
here can write like you!’”

Is not the germ of the picture ‘‘ The Slinger ”
to be found here? ‘‘A grand sight it is to see
the villagers keeping the birds from the crops—
they all serve in their turn—men, women, and
children ; they stand each on a rude sort of
scaffold which rises about two feet clear of the
corn; they are armed with slings from which they
hurl huge lumps of clay at the birds, uttering
loud cries at the same time. Their movements
are full of grandeur and character. I wonder
Gérome has never treated a subject so well suited
to him. Why, too, has he never painted mine
enemy the Sakkea, which is even more emphati-
cally in his way? for, besides the scope for fine
and quaint forms both in the men and in the
animals that work it, the accessories are abund-
ant and interesting, and there are ropes in great
abundance.

‘‘Is the Sakkea my friend or my enemy? Its
charm is so incessant that I should have to make
up my mind if I stayed long in the country ; it
would either fascinate me or drive me mad. As

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL = 71

I listen in the silence of the evening, the rise and
fall, the shifting and swaying of the wind, bring
its complaint from across the gurgling river in
such a fitful way that it has the strangest and
most unexpected effects. Sometimes I fancy I
hear deep, drowsy tones of a distant organ;
sometimes the shrill quavering of a bagpipe;
sometimes it is like a snatch of song ; sometimes
like a whole chorus of voices singing a solemn
strain in the sad, empty night; sometimes, alas!
too often, like a snarling, creaking doorpost.”’

Here is a picture of a deserted garden that
his brush could scarcely have made more vivid.
‘** Beyond the village I wandered into a delightful
garden ; a half-cultivated wilderness of palms and
_ gum trees in which one came on unexpected
pergolas and lovely garden trees, all pouring
out their most intoxicating scents under the finest
sun I ever walked beneath. I saw oleanders, the
flowers of which were as thick as roses, and smelt
like a quintessence of nectarines; there were also
some beautiful olive trees with weeping branches
—a thing I had never seen before—and with
berries as large as plums. Overhead, amongst
the yellow dates, sat doves the colour of pale
violets.”

A confession that might find its place in the
appreciation of his life’s work occurs in these
pages. ‘‘I hate sketching heads rapidly; it is
unavoidably and odiously free and easy, and
nearly all that is worthy escapes. But I have
no time for more, and, I suppose, the sketches
will be useful. One man, with a face like a

be FREDERIC LEIGHTON

camel, whom I drew in profile, was enraged
(though in a general way complimentary) at see-
ing only one eye in the picture. This struck me
as quaint, for he was dnd of the other; he had
not been defrauded of much.”

About the basil plant, he tells us: ‘‘When I
saw Holman Hunt’s ‘‘Isabel,” his pot of basil
puzzled me sorely. I had seen a great deal of
basil, and have an especial love for it, but I had
never seen it except with a very small leaf. I was
sure, however, knowing his great accuracy, that
Hunt had sufficient foundation for the large leaf
he gave the plant in his picture; the very fellow
of it is now before me in a nosegay of flowers
very kindly sent me by the old governor of Eme.
As I smell it I am assailed by pleasant memories
of Lindos—‘Lindos the beautiful’—and Rhodes,
and that marvellous blue coast across the sea
that looks as if it could enclose nothing behind
its crested rocks but the Gardens of the Hespe-
rides; and I remember those gentle, courteous
Greeks of the islands (so unlike their swaggering
kinsfolk—if they are their kinsfolk—of the main-
land) and the little nosegay, a red carnation and
a fragrant sprig of basil, with which they always
dismiss a guest.”

The dancing girls appear again and again in
the journal. Here is a characteristic description of
them. ‘‘ The dancing girls who came to entertain
us in the evening were no doubt better than those
of Longso, though, with one exception, at least
as ugly; but some of them were gorgeously
attired (from the dancing-dog point of view) and

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL = 73

all wore a mass of gold necklaces and coins and
glittering headgear, which produced at a certain
distance, and in the doubtful light, a prodigiously
fine effect of colour. The dancing was a little
more varied than that of the Longso women,
chiefly, no doubt, because they got more to drink ;
but, ev somme, | was confirmed in my first im-
pression, that it is an eminently ugly perform-
ance, though a very remarkable gymnastic feat.
Of course a graceful and good-looking girl may
do a good deal to redress it by personal charm,
and this was in some degree the case with
Zehneb, who is a noted dancer and the fine flower
of the profession. She is pretty though coarse
in feature, and not without grace; but has a
_semi-European smack about her dress and ways
that spoils her in my eyes. Hers, by-the-by, are
splendid.”

The curious festivals he attended are nu-
merous. I select the description of a Moolid.
**On entering I was conducted, after taking off
my boots, to a post of honour, on the ground of
course, in the midst of a grave circle of worthies
who were squatting in the ruelle, between one
side of the coffin and the wall. On my right
was one of the civic functionaries, on my left the
priest attached to the tomb. The spectacle be-
fore me was wonderful, both in colour and form,
though composed in great part of the simplest
elements. It was like the finest Delacroix in
aspect and tone, but with a gravity, and state-
liness of form very foreign to that brilliant but
epileptic genius. To the left of me, covered

74 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

with a showy embroidered cloth, stood behind
the railing the sarcophagus of the saint, illumi-
nated from above by various lanterns hung from
the ceiling (the central one, and the handsomest,
the gift of Lady Duff Gordon), and from the
corners by gigantic candles standing in candle-
sticks of proportionate dimensions ; at the same
corners stood great banners of a sober but rich
tone which added much to the general colour.
At each side of the carpet at the bend of which
I squatted, squatted in far more picturesque attire,
some of the notables of Kench half-hidden in the
shadow.”

At a place called Edfou, he tells how ‘‘ we
are now again in the region of doves, whose
presence in large number affects the architecture
of the village in a most curious manner. Every
house has or rather zs a dovecot, the chief corps
de batiment being a tower or several towers of
which the whole upper part is exclusively affected
to the doves.” . . . ‘* The construction of these
towers is both peculiar and ingenious ; they are
built up entirely with earthen jars, sometimes
placed topsy-turvy, but most often on their side

. . and tied above this like bottles in a cellar.
The. exterior is then filled in with mud and the
interior presents the appearance of a honey-
comb, the cells being formed by the hollow jars.
In these jars the doves have their abode. It is
easy to see that by turning a few of the jars
outward avery simple but pretty decoration may
be obtained; a crest is added at the top by
placing jars upside down at certain intervals ;

heist of Vir tr bewcint, LES yp Lire hate,
Lead 2 covets Ltvelh, fly St of lig s big hota
LEE ie oe ew Gy ae aa RA

PAGE FROM LORD LEIGHTON’'S DIARY

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EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL 75

the bands of colour are generally divided by a
string of brick-course something after this fashion,
but with much variety, and each of these string
courses is garnished by a perfect hedge of
branches and twigs, projecting horizontally a
yard or more, and forming resting-places for
thousands of doves.” In this curious dove-
devoted village ‘‘the natives also make to them-
selves curious pillar cupboards of mud (about
man high) which, from a distance, have the
oddest appearance ; they look like raised pies on
- pedestals.”

At Boulay he meets a notable French Egyptolo-
_ gist, who assures him that the Nile has been
turned from its course by a great chain of hills at
Syoot. ‘‘//Z allait vivement se zeter dans la mer.”
“Tn fact, but for those hills there would have been
no Lower Egypt, that country being literally the
_ child of the Nile, which alone prevents the sands
of the central deserts from ruling over the whole
breadth of the land. Here was a dramatic reve-
lation of coincidences! Here was a startling
suggestion of contingencies! It fairly took your
breath away! Without that hill no Nile north
of Syoot! Half Egypt would not have been!
No Memphis! Memphis with its wisdom! No
Alexandria with its ‘schools,’ no Cairo with its
4,000 mosques! No Pharaohs! No Moses!
(The poor devil of a sculptor who drowned him-
self in his own fountain because he found he had
made his Moses too short, might have died in
his bed.) No Cleopatra! (Turn in your grave,
noble dust of Antony!) ‘ Forty centuries’ would

76 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

have had no pyramids from which to look down
on the conquering arms of Buonaparte! Mr.
Albert Smith’s popular entertainment would
have been shorn of half its glories—at one
breath! To what fantastic proportions did that
hill grow as one thought of it!”

On consulting the map the theory was de-
molished. The Nile was shown to have been
flowing for nearly two hundred miles in a north-
westerly direction, away from the Red Sea; and
the hills which were responsible for making the -
history of the world what it is ‘‘ were on the
western bank of the river”!

One more extract, and we must leave this land
of enchantment. ‘‘ My delight in the evening is
to watch the procession of women and girls
coming down to the Nile to fetch water. The
brown figures, clad in brown, coming in long
rows along the brown bank in all the glow and
glory of sunset, look very grand; very grand,
too, returning up the steep bank along the violet
sky, with their long, flowing folds, and their full
pitchers now erect on their heads (when empty
they carry them horizontally). They are neither
handsome individually nor particularly well made,
but their movements are good, and the repetition
of the same ‘motive’ many times in succession
makes the whole scene impressive and stately.
There is no more fruitful source of effect in
Nature and Art than iteration.

‘‘The suppleness of the limbs of the children
here is extraordinary. I have seen little girls
squatting like grasshoppers in the Nile drinking

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. 77

a méme, the water in which they were standing
little more than ankle deep.

‘*An hour after nightfall the dahabieh, my
neighbour, slipped her cables and began to drift
down the river, but not till the rhapsodist had
chanted his ditty to the approving murmurs of
his little circle as on the preceding night. His
singing has a great charm for me; I shall miss
it. It reminds me much of Andalusian singing
and moonlight nights in the bay of Cadiz; there
is about it a strangeness and a wayward melan-
choly that attracts and charms me. It was a
love song, I am told (for I could not hear the
words, and would have understood very few if I
had). ‘Ya leyl! ya leyl! ya leyl!’ the eternal
refrain of Arab songs. ‘Oh, night! oh, night!
_ oh, night! you have left a fire in my heart. Oh,
my beloved! oh, my beloved, do not forget me!’
etc. A day or two ago | heard a youth calling the
faithful to noonday prayer with one of the finest
voices I have ever heard. He was tearing his
notes from the inmost depths of his chest with
that eagerness of yet unconscious passion that
I have often noticed in southern children, and
which to me is singularly pathetic. He sus-
tained his last notes as long as his breath
allowed it, and they vibrated in distinct waves,
like a sonorous metal set in motion; from a
little distance the effect was sazsissant. I could
not see him, and the air seemed to throb
with sound as well as with heat in the sultry
noon.”

It is difficult to tear oneself away from these

78 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

pages, telling of what he saw and felt in that land
of pictures and of memories. But space will
not allow me to dwell longer upon these fascinat-
ing pages; we must follow him now in his work
as an R.A.

CHAPTIARe VIII
ROYAL ACADEMICIAN

Appreciation of Leighton’s work—Classicism the very essencé
of his nature—The type, the all in all with him—Not of his
time, yet commanding its respect— Uniqueness of his posi-
tion—Great landscape painter—Classification of his work—
Richard Mutter on Leighton—Beauty, Leighton’s religion.

WE have followed so far the painter in his
career. We have seen his struggles, and
recognised that he has succeeded in his resolve
_ to be placed in the front rank of those who have
treated the human form ideally. He is now a
Royal Academician, and the time has come to
consider his life-work as a whole.

The main thing about Leighton’s art is that it
was supremely classic—that is to say, he worked
in the classic spirit, which does not in the least
occupy itself with nature as such in its mere
varieties and eccentricities of character, but which
is only concerned with nature as offering the
materials for selection for the creation of the per-
fect ideal. In the classic sense Leighton will ever
be the most extraordinary artist of modern times.
You may agree with him or disagree with him,
but you cannot fail to recognise the absolute
uniqueness of his position. Other artists have
only approached it. He was there. Classicism

79

80 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

was of the very essence of his being. He saw
in all nature, especially in all human nature, only
something to pick and choose from to the end of
remaking nature in the image of his own mind.

All the figures in his work had this quality. Our —
memory may serve us ill, but we do not recollect a

single ugly human being deliberately presented by

him as such. He knew nothing of that side of
nature, or probably he would have preferred to

put it as an accident. He knew only of a world

of fair women and heroically moulded men, and

he fitted them into the parts they were called

upon to play for illustrative purposes, without

thinking of varying the type. It was an obses-

sion with him. He could not keep away from it.

His work is one long procession of noble and

beautiful figures engaged in noble and beautiful

actions, and leading their lives with supreme un-
consciousness that anything but beauty, and

especially that the contortions of pain and sorrow,

exist in the world.

The only thing in which he failed was in pre-
serving the supreme effect of nature in his series
of selections taken as a whole. After all, while
the Venus of Milo, really wrought on the same
principle, is still a woman, his heroines are often
but selections from the beauties of the plastic
poets. Few of them form a living whole. There,
and there only, he came short of his great classic
models. It is possible that he was entirely like
them in his methods; he only failed to be like
them in results for want of the full measure of
their informing spirit, for want of the feeling that-

HELEN OF TROY

ROYAL ACADEMICIAN 81

went hand in hand with their stupendous intellect.
He came singularly out of time, into a world
which had long since given up the worship of the
classic alike in literature and in art, and which
had gone over wholly to the delight in pure
character—that is to say, in variation from the
type. With him the type, the whole type, and
nothing but the type, was the all in all.. Some of
his figures might change parts with others; due
regard of course being paid to sex and age. The
man’s figure in ‘‘Wedded,” for instance, might
do for the Cymon in the picture of ‘‘Cymon and
Iphigenia.” In both we see the strong man before
the appealing beauty of woman. The charming
creature in ‘‘Day Dreams” might, dressed in
black, have done for ‘‘ Andromeda, Captive,” or,
attired in veils of light, for ‘‘ Helen of Troy.”
This, we repeat, will ever make Leighton one
of the most interesting figures in modern art.
He was interesting quite independently of his
achievements, in virtue of his creed, of the faith
that lay behind all his endeavours. He was
eminently not of his time, yet he held on to a
view of life and art which commanded the respect
of his time, as all beliefs, clearly seen, firmly
held, and boldly followed, must ever do. It was
Leighton’s singular good fortune, we might say,
to have this quality of uniqueness in all that he
did. He was unique, not only as a painter, but,
as I hope to show, as a president of the Royal
Academy, and, again, as an accomplished man of
the world. He copied no one else, he was him-
self, and, to very distant ages of art indeed, he

G

82 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

will stand as the most extraordinary representative
of a vanished ideal.

There is one singular exception to be made to
all this, and it only shows how Leighton was
fated in everything to stand as a being apart.
It is no paradox to say that he probably missed
his vocation in not keeping simply and solely to
landscape. Inanimate nature happily defied his
method, only by her greater variety, and when
he sought to pick and choose from her, with a
view to his reconstructing something that should
be better than herself, she frankly set him at
defiance. He was, therefore, in spite of himself,
compelled to fall back on the mere impression of
her by a generous, free interpretation which
yielded the most fascinating results. There is a
sketch of Athens with the Genoese tower Pnyx in
the foreground, beyond is the perfect curve of the
mountains, grand and austere, the tower and the
buildings rising in profile against the brilliant
sky. He never painted a picture that brought
home more completely the desolation and gran-
deur of a scene than does this little sketch. There
is a drawing of the coast of Asia Minor seen from
Rhodes, the dark basalt line of cliffs rising against
the delicate outlines of further ranges of blue
distances. In Assiout, Egypt, he took a sketch
of the City of Tombs ; the magic of expression is
in that mournful landscape in which white tombs
gleam under the sweep of mountainous ranges
with shining water in the foreground. We have
read in his journal of the effects of moonlight,
and of the purple fields about the Nile; and we

ROYAL ACADEMICIAN 83

know how he said that it was the passion of his
life to paint landscape.

Subject to this definition it is very hard indeed
to classify him, because the definition makes the
whole classification. He was classic in spirit,
as the cant phrase goes, first, last, and all the
time; so that an attempt to put his pictures
under minor categories is not much more than
a matter of convenience. However, we may
say that his work was in one section of it
purely decorative—by that we mean fresco, or
wall painting; in another, classical in subject in
the ordinary sense—that is to say, illustrative
of classic literature; in a third domestic; in
another religious. There are his single heads
and single figures, and there are his portraits
—nor must we omit his statues—and that seems
to exhaust the list.

His heads were almost invariably types of
beauty when they were not portraits, and when
they were, we can see that he had had a word in
the choice of his sitter, and that he cared very
little to paint persons whom it did not suit him
to paint. It was still selection if it were a
selection confined to his sitter, one that com-
pelled him to take his subject for better or for
worse. ‘‘English painting,” says Richard Mutter,
in his admirable history of modern painting, ‘‘is
exclusively an art based on luxury, optimism,
and aristocracy in its neatness, cleanliness, and
good breeding, it is exclusively designed to in-
gratiate itself with English ideas of comfort.”
He goes on to say that it is especially an art for

84. FREDERIC LEIGHTON

the drawing-room, and that a picture is regarded
in the first place as an attractive article of fur-
niture. ‘‘Everything must be kept within the
bounds of what is charming, temperate, and
prosperous, without in any degree suggesting
the struggle for existence,” and he sees in Leigh-
ton the artist par excellence, whose work meets
all these requisites. This is true as far as it
goes, but it does not go far enough. A deeper
view of Leighton’s art and purpose would show
not that he was merely solicitous to add decora-
tive comfort to the houses of the great and
opulent, but that he really and truly believed that
the selection of beautiful objects had something in
it of morality and even of religion. He was
not selecting with the lower aim of being merely
agreeable to prosperous persons ; he was selecting
with the higher aim of setting before them and
everybody else, something for the guidance of
life. The struggle for existence had nothing to
do with his art. The appeal of the perplexing
differences in the lot of the many did not concern
it; the suffering and the toil of the poor he
ignored. What he sought for was a harmon-
ising ideal, that which gave the promise of an
enriched and perfected humanity. The sorrow of
that humanity, in so far only as it lent itself to
beautiful and dignified expressions, found no
place in his pictured dreams. His art was not
didactic or mystical. Some of his critics, we
shall see, deplored its aimlessness. It was not
aimless, rather it was full of aim; for it existed
to bring the conception of beauty into life.

-
g

CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE

ROYAL ACADEMICIAN 85

Beauty was a sort of outer conscience to him,
and he believed if rightly appreciated it would be
a standard of morals to all humanity. Mean-
ness, cruelty, and other vices were above all
things ugly, and as such he hated them. This
was Leighton’s creed. How far he worked it out
in his pictures we shall hope presently to see.

CHAPTER IX
HIS CLASSICAL PICTURES

‘‘Hercules wrestling with Death” might be a Greek frieze—
“The Daphnephoria” the zenith of his power—‘‘ Cymon
and Iphigenia” embodying his creed—‘‘ Captive Andro-
meche,” summing up of his methods, ideals, and limitations
—‘‘ Perseus and Andromeda”’ not happy in effect—‘‘ The
Return of Persephone ”—‘‘ The Garden of the Hesperides”
glow of colour—Single figures—Their statuesque quality—
“*Clytemnestra on the battlements of Argos ”—‘‘ The Last
Watch of Hero”—‘‘ Phryne at Eleusis”—‘‘ The Bath of
Psyche” bought by the Chantrey fund—‘‘Clytie” the
passionate expression of his genius.

\\ 7E shall begin our estimate of Leighton’s

work by the appreciation of some of his
most important representations of classical
themes—pictured pages torn from the poem of
Greek life. We shall then pass on to his single
figures, his domestic scenes, his portraits, his
scriptural art, his frescoes and sculpture. We
have seen how he began his artistic career with
a picture of ‘‘Cimabue’s Madonna,” how his
picture of the ‘‘Syracusan Bride” decided his
election to the Royal Academy. These pro-
cessional themes had a great hold upon his
imagination; they gave him the opportunity
for displaying his sense of the rhythmic flow

HIS CLASSICAL PICTURES 87

of line and the grouping of masses. The “ Her-
cules struggling with Death for the body of
Alcestis” (1871) marks a period in his career.
Death has come to lead away into Hades the soul
of the wife who has consented to lay down her
life for the sake of her husband. Hercules is
flinging himself between her and the dread an-
tagonist, and is contesting his approach step by
step. There is immense vigour in the action
of the demi-god, and we feel the strength of his
ghostly opponent by the strain on his muscles made
by the awful combat. Alcestis lies under a grove
of trees—serene under her calm white draperies,
the only immobile figure in the picture. About her
are grouped her maidens and retainers huddled
together in attitudes expressive of terror and of
pity. The accessories are beautiful, the sea-
scape, the milky cloudy sky, just tinged with the
warm glow of sunset, the sea whose distant
horizon we mistily perceive. In this picture the
balancing of the groups, the learned disposition
of the line, the beauty of the figures might have
been copied from a Greek frieze. The tumult of
it is restrained and there is calm in the midst of
its passion.

In ‘‘Dedalus and Icarus” (1869) we have two
figures only. The Icarus might stand for another
Apollo Belvedere. He is typical of the youth of
the world, splendidly proportioned, full of mag-
nificent illusions, his face aglow in anticipation of
his incomparable adventure. Dzedalus is fastening
the last strap that will keep the pinion on his
son’s shoulder, and gazes up into his face. It isa

88 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

picture of age—experienced, helpful, believing,
and yet fearing; and of youth—extravagant,
squandering life, believing in success, yet ready
to die for something worthier than sheltered
days. The background is one of Leighton’s
happiest delineations, the blue sea and the white
town gleam in brilliant sunshine.

‘‘Helios and Rhodos” (1869) is an idyll of the
gods. The spirit of the island rises from the sea,
red roses bloom about her feet, she stretches out
her arms to clasp the Sun-God, who, stooping
from his chariot, takes her to himself. with the
tenderness of undying love. The charm of blue
sea, of flowers, of perfect beauty of form, tell
the eternal love story in mingled hues.

In ‘‘The Daphnephoria”’ (1876) Leightonappears
at the zenith of his powers. Here was an oppor-
tunity for embodying the marvellous dream of
happy youth going in stately procession to do
honour to the god of love and beauty. The
scene is Thebes, the occasion a festival held in
honour of Apollo and in memory of a victory.
Boys and girls, youths and maidens march to the
music of instruments and of their chaunting down
a laurel grove to the portal of a temple. Around
is the sunny glory of a Grecian summer day, and
holiday makers are gathering to see the pro-
cession pass. A priest bearing his staff with the
emblems of the Greek planetary system turns to
look at the Daphnephori, clothed in white and
gold, the central figure appointed to take the
place of the high priest to Apollo. The choir
leader is turning round to bid the train of youth-

HIS CLASSICAL PICTURES 89

ful minstrels sing. They respond lustily; we see it
in the free attitudes of their bodies clad in purple
and rose colour, in white and blue. The picture
is a vision of bygone days, the glory of which
is among us still ; it moves the dream of a great
ideal nobly and elaborately planned. At Leighton
House may be seen the studies with which the
master prepared for his work, the draperies, the
heads and figures of maidens and youths, the
sketches of priests and acolytes, the landscape,
sonorous in effect, taken from memories of happy
days spent in Athens and Thebes. It is a work
of the highest ideal and of pure devotion to art;
it is the apotheosis of youth; yet its appeal is
remote as is that of a dream. In the rhythmic
quality of the lines, in its delicate and vivid
colouring, it affects us as a piece of music might
affect us.

We are now at the culminating point of
Leighton’s genius. It found expression in his
“Cymon and Iphigenia” (1884). This picture
embodies, we think, his creed that beauty
might serve as the religion of our soul, the
sentiment of it leading us to higher planes of
spiritual being. In a magnificent landscape
of early autumn or late summer, with the moon
sinking behind the dark sea in the horizon,
Cymon, ‘‘the fool of nature,” stands gazing at
Iphigenia, sleeping in a grove of trees. Her
attendants surround her, the white draperies of
her couch envelop her, her softly modelled arms
are stretched above her head, her face is of
almost perfect beauty. It is a picture of pro-

go FREDERIC LEIGHTON

found sleep in the midst of the calm freshness of
nature. It is full of complicated problems of
colour and effects of light and shade all triumph-
antly overcome. Cymon, however, is not nature’s
fool, but a meditative youth, a sort of Hamlet,
reflecting upon this vision of beauty. The story
tells how the spectacle worked upon him so that
henceforth all base things grew hateful to him.
The picture has more of the force of personality
than we are usually aware of in Leighton’s works.
In 1888 he exhibited ‘‘ Captive Andromache.”
The picture is wholly impersonal, but its beauty,
its refinement, the great learning that it dis-
plays cannot be overpraised. It is a splendid
summing up of Leighton’s methods, of his ideals
and limitations. The incident which it represents
is suggested by Hector’s prophecy of the fate
awaiting his wife after the fall of Troy :—

«*. . . Some standing by,
Marking thy tears fall, shall say, ‘ This is she,
The wife of that same Hector that fought best
Of all the Trojans, when all fought for Troy.’”’

The picture depicts the farmyard of Pyrrhus in
Thessaly. Andromache stands a graceful dignified
figure clad in mourning, a pitcher at her feet, as
she waits for the maidens to have finished drawing
water from the well. She is watching with self-
contained sadness the gambols of a little child,
who, with its father and mother, occupy the
centre of the picture. The group before and
behind her stand in many graceful and spon-
taneous attitudes. All are discussing the royal

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« VINGSDIHdI GNV NOWAD,, 40 AYNLIId AIOHM NYOA AGNIS

HIS CLASSICAL PICTURES gl

stranger. It is a beautiful picture, erudite in
detail, complete in all its parts, upon which
we look with the greatest interest and admira-
tion, and yet we are not moved by it as we feel
we should be. It is as if we were looking at
some sculptured work of art. There is nothing
in it of the quality of brilliant improvisation,
nothing of the rugged emotion of the scene.

In 1891 came the ‘‘ Perseus and Andromeda.”
The nude figure of a maiden standing under the
spread-out wing of the fell monster is full of a
shrinking and pathetic grace, but the effect is not
happy. The dragon is a magnificent piece of
painting, the head the embodiment of bestial
appetite. Perseus on his winged horse up in the
sky is coming to deliver Andromeda. This figure
of the saviour has spirit. The sparkling sea, the
beetling cliffs about are in fine keeping with the
scene. The designs at Leighton House show
the pains taken by Leighton to get the natural
effect of the winged steed and his rider. There
is a lack of the sense of congruity, however, in
the whole composition. In ‘‘The Return of
Persephone” (1892) we would note the marvel-
lous drapery and the éan of the figure of Ceres,
rushing forward to clasp the daughter brought
to her by Mercury. It is still chargeable with a
certain inadequacy to the needs of that tremen-
dous theme. These are rather any two figures
meeting than those of a mother welcoming her
daughter back from the realms of death.

‘““The Garden of the Hesperides” (1892), the
last of Leighton’s great illustrative classic

92 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

pictures, is a dignified and simple design of
circular form, the colour of which is almost too
sumptuous. Every tint of the palette seems to
have been exhausted. The maidens are reclining
in diaphanous draperies of green, rose, and
amber at the foot of the tree laden with golden
fruit, round the bole of which a huge python has
trailed its length. The involved positions of the
girls playing with the monster are subtly rendered.
The series of designs he executed for this picture
are among the masterpieces of his pencil. It is
a very fine work, lacking, however, the dreamy
effect and the completeness of some of his more
classic renderings.

In his single-figure classical pictures he tells
his tale with the same completeness, the same
restrained emotion growing more. refined and
more remote as the years go on. In one instance
only does the work appear spontaneous; as a
rule it is the finished work of the thoughtful and
melodious poet unable to keep the secret of his
learning to himself. In these single - figure
pictures we are struck by their statuesque quality.
The study of the line was a prominent part of his
art, and he assigned to drapery a part only as
significant as Phidias has assigned to it in his
studies. The flow and rhythm of line emphasised
the expression he wished to represent. Thus in
his great picture of ‘‘Electra at the tomb of
Agamemnon,” much of the style is due to the
straight lines of the peplum, flowing from the
chin to the feet of the mourning woman, caught
up and echoed by the straight lines of the Doric

CLYTEMNESTRA FROM THE BATTLEMENTS OF ARGOS WATCHES
FOR THE BEACON FIRES WHICH ARE TO ANNOUNCE
THE RETUKN OF AGAMEMNON

HIS CLASSICAL PICTURES 93

column against which she leans. Ruskin says
that the study of the folds and the manner of
their arrangement is always a sign of idealism
and mysticism. ‘‘Clytemnestra on the battle-
ments of Argos, waiting for the beacon fires
which are to announce the return of Agamemnon”’

(1874) is a fine example of his use of line. The
wife of the king of men stands clothed in
voluminous draperies upon the terraced roof of
her palace watching with tragic intent across the
city bathed in moonlight, ominous in its black
shadows, for the flare “of ‘the welcoming flames.
Her attitude is tense and rigid, her face drawn
and pale; the draperies seem to swell with her
passionate resolve as they cling to her straight
Titanic form. There is no soft grace here, no
wily charm of the seductive murderess. The
exact shade of the bar of red introduced into the
picture was suggested by the coral necklace worn
by a model, whose portrait Leighton took by
moonlight in Italy, and supplies the needed note
of colour in the spectral tones.

‘The Last Watch of Hero” (1887) is another
work that almost touches the real world of
passion, but it is too smoothly painted to express
the torment of the heroine’s soul. A single half-
length figure, draped in rose-coloured folds, is
standing in a columned balustrade gazing eagerly
out of the picture. The face with its dark eyes
is expressive, and yet it is disappointing in some-
thing of its consciousness. In the pardella is a
study in monochrome of Leander ‘‘rolled on the
stones and washed with breaking spray.” ‘‘The

94 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

Jealousy of Simztha the Sorceress” (1887) ex-
presses all the pathos and anguish of the torment
of human passion.

‘‘Phryne at Eleusis” (1882) is a nude figure
that has been much debated. She emerges from
the draperies that lie about her feet, spreading
out the tresses of her auburn hair; her skin of a
golden brown seems to be illuminated by the
glow of sunset. She stands superbly nude, full
of life and health, delicately moulded, and of a
statuesque purity and dignity all her own. A
filmy red tissue falls from her shoulder, and a
green mantle lies draped at her feet. The sky
behind her is a sunny mass of clouds floating in
the blue. It is a noble study of the nude, a
typical representation of the hetaira in all her
imperial charm. Géréme has treated the subject
with a more dramatic intensity. The troubled
tribunal in the background completes the story of
the picture, though Leighton would probably not
have dared to introduce it even if he had priority
in the invention. It would have completed the
story only too well for the public to which he
appealed.

‘Nausicaa ” (1878) is a delightful girl standing
at a doorway. She is rather a study in wan
brown, olive-green, and white delicately toned,
than the deliberate representation of Homer’s
princess who loved Ulysses.

We are inclined to place among his most ideal
classic figures the lovely ‘‘ Psamathe” (1880).
She is sitting by the seashore and gazing over
the blue water of the Agean; transparent

BATH OF PSYCHE

Tate Gallery

(By permission of the Berlin J ‘hotographic Co.,
London, I.)

:

HIS CLASSICAL PICTURES 95

draperies have slipped from her shoulders, and
she turns her back on the spectator. It is a
picture of seductive beauty. The sight of it over-
powers every feeling but that of delight in the
absolute charm of its perfection.

A contrast to this glow of colour is ‘‘ Lach-
tyme” (1895), the type of a stately Greek maiden
standing by a funeral urn; the prevailing tints of
her draperies are sad blue and black, the flow of
lines is expressive of desolation. It might stand
for the pictured mourning of the world.

“The Bath of Psyche” (1890), a life-sized

' nude figure, simply and tenderly treated, stand-

ing beside a white marble fountain, holding back
the drapery with which she is clothed. This
Suave conception is informed with a spirit of
perfect chastity. It was bought by the Royal
Academy under the Chantrey bequest.

We cannot mention all the classic figures that
he painted—‘‘ The Antigone” (1882), ‘‘Atalanta”’
(1893), ‘‘ Corinna of Tanagra (1893), the splendid
** Fatidica’’ (1894),—until we come to ‘‘ Clytie”’
(exhibited in 1896, after his death). It was the
last work of his genius. We seem to see his
soul bursting free from the hindering trammels of
academic convention. He laid aside the finished
and restrained classicism that gave so much, but
that also hid more, and by a supreme effort he
expressed all his passion of aspiration. Clytie, the
nymph who loved the sun as he had loved his art, is
sunk on her knees beside an altar of white marble
covered with offerings of fruit ; her red-brown hair
is loosened from the fillet that bound it. With

96 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

outstretched arms she appeals to the god not
to desert her, and he answers with a flash of
radiance that seems to pervade her whole form.
There is an élan, a revealing secret of anguished
entreaty in this unfinished picture. Other works
remained more or less finished on the last day in
his studio.

CHAPTER X

DOMESTIC AND MISCELLANEOUS SCRIPTURAL
SUBJECTS

“Wedded,” typical of all the married lovers of the world—
Pictures of everyday life set in the glamour of the ideal—
“* The Music Lesson ””—‘‘ Winding of the Skein ”—“‘ Sister’s
Kiss ”—‘‘ Greek Girls picking up Pebbles by the Sea,”
delightful example of Leighton’s skill in painting trans-
parent draperies—‘‘Greek Girls playing Ball,” ungraceful
in attitude—‘*‘ Summer Moon,” peerless for beauty—‘‘ The
Egyptian Slinger,” a poem of labour—‘‘The Juggling
Girl” —‘‘ The Jews’ Quarter at Old Damascus,” an
example of seductive colour—‘‘St. Jerome in the Desert,”
diploma picture—‘‘ Elijah in the Desert,” more restrained in
expression. ‘‘Elisha and the Shunamite’s Son”—‘‘ The
Sea giving up its Dead”—‘‘ Rizpah,” examples of skilful
compositions—His types of beauty—Portraits of men more
successful than are those of women—His own portrait at
the Uffizi Gallery.

F we pass on to Leighton’s domestic pictures

we shall see that they are as classical in spirit
as are those of the myths of olden time. In
‘Wedded ” (1882), perhaps the most popular of
these, there is great sentiment in the manner in
which the young husband bends his head over his
wife’s hand and kisses it as she stretches back to
him with graceful languor. They stand on a
height, these two young souls. ‘‘All the world.is
at their feet,” said Leighton, as he showed me

H 97

98 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

the picture in his studio. The note of arrested
and restrained passion has made this representa-
tion a typical one of all the married lovers of the
world.

‘¢The Music Lesson” (1877) and ‘‘ The Wind-
ing of the Skein” (1878) are everyday scenes set
in the glamour of an ideal world. The women’s
exquisite wax-like complexions help the air of
beautiful unreality which belongs to these crea-
tions. In the first of these two studies we see a
classic hall of white, black, and red marble in
which sits a child in a blue dress, a witching
wonder of pale colours, and her young mother in
a white and gold loose robe, her deep auburn hair
forming a lovely contrast to her child’s pale yellow
locks. Both mother and child are barefooted.
She is guiding the tender little fingers over the
chords of an exquisitely embossed lyre. The
brooding love of the mother, the eagerness of the
child are in that picture. ‘‘ The Winding of the
Skein ” (1878) is an open-air scene. In an eastern
and golden white light are two Greek maidens,
who almost might be maidens of to-day, deep in
their homely occupation. Perhaps the loveliest
of all these lovely interpretations of dream world
is ‘‘Sister’s Kiss” (1880), a representation of
childhood and of early girlhood. The exquisite
bloom and transparency of skin of these two
charming creatures we can hope scarcely ever to
see outside of these pictures. A pearly sky forms
the background to the figure of a girl in a rich
green overdress. She is supporting herself with
her hands upon a low marble wall, and with head

DOMESTIC SUBJECTS 99

thrown back is receiving the kiss the child im-
prints upon her lips.

In ‘‘ The Idyll” (1881), in ‘‘ Whispers ” (1881),
in ‘‘ Day Dreams” (1882), is the same chastened
sensuous feeling expressed, with the same pass-
ing refinement. It is all a world of beauty, in
which lovely shapes, clad in draperies the folds
of which fall on the eye like music on the ear,
play their part of loving, of dreaming, and of
wistful longing. We almost feel inclined to wish
for the rigors of everyday life, for the whole-
someness of a touch of winter in the midst of so
much sweetness.

‘Greek Girls picking up Pebbles by the Sea”
(1871) is a charming example of Leighton’s skill
in painting transparent tissues. The flimsy white
folds are tossed by the play of the breeze, and
half hide and half reveal the tender forms they
cover. In 1889 we come to the ‘‘Greek Girls play-
ing at Ball,” the only picture of Leighton’s, we
think, in which the women are in ungraceful atti-
tudes. He shows an extraordinary knowledge of
anatomy in the rendering of the hunched-up left
shoulder of the girl who has just tossed the ball.
The landscape is perfect, the blue sea, the moun-
tains and the sky, the sunlit houses; and then there
is the incomparable drapery puckered up in its in-
numerable folds. The sketches for this picture
are among the most beautiful things that we have
in Leighton House.

‘*Cleobulus instructing his daughter Cleobu-
lina” is a fascinating domestic scene. It shows
Leighton’s insight into the grace of girlishness,

100 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

and it is also a skilful rendering of all the details
of Greek life. Other pictures of domestic scenes,
instinct with the classical spirit, our readers will
find in the catalogue of his pictures at the end of
the volume.

We shall now pass on to the class which we
shall call his miscellaneous canvases. Of these,
‘¢Summer Moon” (1872), we should rank as the
first, for its perfect artistic expression of profound
sleep, and for the decorative beauty of its lines.
Two girls, in draperies of crimson, blue, and
white, have fallen asleep in each other’s arms on
a marble balcony, the balustrade of which takes
the form of the crescent moon. The atmosphere
is of a night full of light.. We can imagine just
such an effect of moonlight at Phyle. This
picture, comparatively small, is one that must
rank Leighton very high as a composer of subtle
harmonies in colour. ‘‘ Summer Slumber” (1894)
is a more elaborate example of the sleeping figure.

‘‘The Egyptian Slinger” (1875) is an illus-
trated page of his journal. There is a stronger
personal note in this representation of a dusky
figure standing upright and distinct against a
moonlit sky on a rough platform placed over a
field of ripe corn. All the world is sunk in moon-
light, and forms a background to a ‘‘lad shying
stones at sparrows,” as Mr. Ruskin expressed it.
He found fault with the subject of the picture,
rather than with the manner of its execution.
Yet I think that the effect of stillness, of the
lonely figure guarding the sea of ripening wheat,
the expanse of grey-blue sky palpitating with

THE FRIGIDARIUM

By permission of Messrs. H. Graves & Co.

DOMESTIC SUBJECTS IOI

light, transfigure the occupation of the lad into
a poem of labour.

To this class of his works belong some of those
graceful and suave pictures that are so eminently
associated with his name. ‘‘ After Vespers ”
(1872), a classical Venetian lady standing, clothed
in green, against a superb piece of gold. ‘‘ Mo-
retta” (1873), ‘‘ Weaving the Wreath,” ‘‘ The
Frigidarium” (1893), ‘‘The Vestal” (1883), ‘‘ Hit”
(1893), ‘‘The Bracelet” (1894), all charming
compositions of surprising grace, and all painted
with that smooth and polished execution that
gave more and more remoteness to his work,
robbing it of much of its personal appeal.

Closely connected with his travels in the East
was ‘‘ The Juggling Girl” (1874), an almost nude
figure tossing a circle of golden balls in front of
an ivory-tinted screen. ‘‘ The Jews’ Quarter at
Old Damascus” (1874), also a recollection of his
Eastern journey, in which delightfully draped
figures are striking lemons from a tree. The
Spectator speaks of these as ‘‘ graceful composi-
tions of beauteous forms and tender memories
of colour with a subtle play of light.” The perfect
‘* Moorish Garden: a Dream of Granada ” (1874),
in which a young girl followed by two peacocks
is carrying copper vessels. All these are delight-
ful to the eye, alive with the seductiveness of
colour. ‘‘The Solitude” (1890) heralds ‘‘ The
Spirit of the Summit” (1894), a white-clad figure
gazing upwards into a starlit sky, solitary on the
heights in a rarefied atmosphere, an allegory of
genius high above ordinary mortals in the cold

102 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

world of contemplation. ‘‘The Spirit of the
Summit ” ought to have had for its title a line
of Goethe’s almost divine poem by which it was
doubtless inspired, ‘‘ Ueber allen Gipfeln ist ruh.”
In great contrast to it is a picture of ‘‘ Flaming
June” (1895). The foreshortened attitude of the
girl presented difficulties which he met and con-
quered in the splendid studies which he made for
this picture. It is a magnificent piece of colour,
its tones running from black through red and
amber.

When we approach Leighton’s scriptural sub-
jects we see expressed the religious strain of his
spirit. The many-sidedness of human nature
and man’s relation with ‘‘the unseen” were
matters over which he pondered curiously. The
ruggedness and the solemnity of some of these
canvases are unlike the grace of his classic
figures. As the years went on they became part
of his more even and artistic compositions. We
have noticed David lost in meditation on the roof
of his house, and ‘‘The Star of Bethlehem,” one of
his most notable early works. The diploma picture
he painted was ‘‘St. Jerome in the Desert” (1860),
and it may be seen in the Diploma Gallery next to
the Royal Academy. The scene is a wild rocky
glen; the saint is naked to the waist, a scourge is
by his side; his wan and wasted form, his face
alight with fervour, are those of the holy man. His
blue robe: contrasts with the duskiness of his sun-
burnt skin. *In an ecstasy of adoration he kneels
before the crucifix which, with uplifted hand, he
is about to clasp. His lion in the background

SCRIPTURAL SUBJECTS 103

sits alert and watching upright against the sun-
set sky. It is a finely conceived picture. There
is more ruggedness and power in it than in the
“Elijah in the Wilderness” (1879). This is
altogether more restrained in expression. The
weary prophet has thrown himself against a
rock, and the angel carrying provisions stands
near, looking down upon him with an enigmatic
smile. The aspect of the rocky wilderness, the
effect of light from the cloud-piled sky are very
fine. But already we see some of the encroaching
polish which appears in the ‘‘Shunamite’s Son”
(1881). Here Elisha is shown bending his eyes
upon the dead child, as if he would conjure its
soul back by the force of his will. The face and
figure of the boy are very beautiful, marked with
a gleam of returning life. It is a picture of high
beauty and solemnity. Leighton felt the scene,
and was greatly moved as he painted it.

The same may be. said of ‘‘ The Sea Gave Up
Its Dead” (1892), a version of the proposed
decoration for St. Paul’s Cathedral. The cor-
rectly drawn and beautifully felt figures are rising
quietly out of the great deep. The principal
group shows a man supporting a woman and a
child. The impression of the life creeping back
is marvellously rendered. The man is quite con-
scious, and is looking up with awed aspiration.
The woman is much nearer death than he is, but
there are signs of waking life in the lovely
drooping face and figure. The child is still quite
dead. It is a pity this central group was not
isolated. We think there is something material

104 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

in the rendering of the details of this awful
moment, in the dull retreating sea, in the grave-
stones, and figures with the cerements still about
them. The composition, however, is extra-
ordinarily skilful. In the ‘‘Rizpah” (1893) the
design is full of passion and terror, but the
execution has an orderly uniformity out of keep-
ing with the feeling of the scene. The mother
with her reaping-hook keeps watch over her dead
sons, and the beasts and the birds of prey approach
and prowl about. The figures are partially hidden
under draperies, but we see enough of them to
note the fineness of the studies of the dead nude.

The heads and half-length figures of girls
which Leighton sent in year after year to the
Royal Academy, to the Grosvenor, and to Suffolk
Street: ‘‘Nanna” (1859), ‘‘ Annarella” (Dudley
Gallery, 1874), ‘‘Rubinella” (Dudley Gallery,
1874), ‘‘Little Fatima” (1875), ‘‘Teresina” (1876),
‘*Serafina” (1878), ‘‘ Biodina”’ (1879), ‘‘Catarina”’
(1879), ‘‘ Amarilla” (1879), ‘‘ Rubinella” (Gros-
venor Gallery, 1880), ‘‘ Bianca” (1881), ‘‘ Zeyra”’
(Grosvenor Gallery, 1882), ‘‘ Letty” (1884), and
many others, were usually small canvases, repre-
senting types of beauty of many countries. These
heads of girls bear names as poetic and sugges-
tive as is their frail, sweet loveliness. They are
all unreal and visionary, these pale women of
graceful and sweet charm. They have not much
character ; they have nothing of the spice of the
devil in them which proves so attractive. They
’ belong to an ideal world where they have never
wept passionate tears or have ever rejoiced, laugh-

SCRIPTURAL SUBJECTS 105

ing for mere laughter’s sake; where they have
never been moved by wild joys and hopes. They
are parted from their sisters of strenuous work-
aday life by a mist of dreams. Their draperies
seem to be wrought of tissue woven in a dust-
less and rainless sphere. The accessories are
all of passing loveliness. There is ‘‘ Neruccia”
(1878), in a white dress with a red flower in her
dark hair; ‘‘ Yanita,” in a green dress, bringing
memories of Seville; ‘‘Nanna,” a dark-haired girl
in Italian costume with peacock’s feathers in the
background; and ‘‘ Bianca” dressed in white,
with doves and flowers behind her. There is
“Little Fatima,” of whom Ruskin said that
‘she would have been quite infinitely daintier
in a print frock and called Patty.” But he had
not read that page in the journal where Leighton
tells us of the Arab child who sat by him and
sometimes with her tiny finger drew patterns on
his dusty boot. ‘‘A Nile Woman ” (1870), whose
splendid sphinx-like type makes us think of the
desert, with the straight folds of a veil drawn
about her head. ‘‘ Letty” is one of the sweetest
and freshest studies of seductive maidens, with a
soft English beauty; her pale brown soft-toned
hair is crowned by a black hat, and about her
neck is a saffron-coloured kerchief. There is a
charming head of a girl in a black dress and a
black hat tied under her chin; she, too, is of
a winsome English sweetness. All these dreamy
and fair women form a procession of whom
Leighton is the dreamer and creator; they belong
to a world where it is always afternoon—not a

106 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

real world as the realists know it, but this glimpse
of it leaves us the richer by a beautiful experi-
ence.

Beauty for its own sake, so notably to be found
in all his pictures, is also to be found in all his
portraits, in those of his women especially. It
is perhaps for this that the women’s portraits
are not so satisfactory as are those of the men.
The pose and the expression of the latter is as a
rule simple and direct. The women have more
self-consciousness, but they are usually so pretty
—there is so much distinction about them—
that they disarm criticism. They do not seem
to be always made of good flesh and blood,
and we cannot believe that Leighton looked all
these charming young creatures in the eyes and
set down frankly what he saw. For his types of
beauty we are inclined to praise Allah that
women are so beautiful and to pass on; but in
his portraits we would wish for a little more
personality—a little more of the human document.
His men are on the whole telling and spirited.
His portrait of Captain Burton (1876) showed
insight into a most rare personality, and it was
an ideal traveller that he painted. The face in
its decision, its alertness, its strength is just the
face of a rugged explorer accustomed to danger,
resolute to decide, and perhaps not very scrupulous
in decisive moments. He does not seem to be
posing, but he stands unconscious. The portrait
of Signor Costa in profile is marked by the same
vigorous handling. We note the donhomie of the
man; his intelligence, his openness, and the clear-

SIR RICHARD BURTON

National Portrait Gallery

SCRIPTURAL SUBJECTS LOF

jness of his look are caught and rendered; that
) profile with its fine brow, the kindly and observant
eye, the important-looking nose, is a piece of
‘biography. It is more freely handled than is
‘usual with Leighton. The same may be said of
\the portraits of John Hanson Walker (1861), of
‘John Martineau (1868) and other men, each
different from the other, each remarkable for
‘some trait, seized and given.

Leighton’s own likeness, painted in 1881 for
i the collection of autograph portraits of artists in
|the Uffizi Gallery, stands out a splendid bit of
| true yet decorative art. You get in it a stronger
'and clearer idea of the man than can be given
‘by any biography. The head with its Jovian
curls rises above the splendour of his red robes
/and chain of office; it detaches itself against a
frieze of the Elgin Marbles, which, as Suzerain,
| the French critic says, ‘‘is a source of inspira-
tion to all British artists.” The portrait gives
}us the impression of a man self - contained,
| magnanimous, of magnificent intellect. We feel
| the force behind that serene aspect, the critical
insight behind that splendour of contemplation.
| He does not look unconscious. It is the face
-and figure of a man accustomed and aware of
| being the centre of observation.

_ The portrait of Mrs. Sutherland Orr (1861) is
an example of unaffected grace. It is finer than
his women’s portraits usually are in that she does
not seem as if she were sitting for her portrait.
| The face has the same look of wakeful interest
noticeable in that of her brother. Some of his

108 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

children’s portraits are enchanting. He seizes
the grace of the little ones with much certainty of
touch. Miss Mabel Mills (1877), with her sweet .
smile, her bright complexion, has a shy evanescent
charm, Miss Nina Joachim (1883), Miss May
Sartoris, Miss Ruth Stewart Hodgson, all are de-
lightful renderings of early girlhood. Lady Sybil
Primrose (1885) is somewhat less successful.
In Mrs. F. Lucas (1889), Mrs. Frederic Cockerell
(1868), Mrs. Mocatta (1882), Lady Coleridge
(1888), and Mrs. Hanson Walker (1867), we
have charming representations, if not very dis-
tinctive, of feminine beauty and of feminine
character.

Much discussion exists as to how much of
Leighton’s work was painted on panel. Here isa
letter addressed to Mrs. Russell Barrington that
disposes of the controversy.

‘Dear Mrs. Barrington,—The only picture I
ever painted on panel was a small landscape
(which I never completed). It was never shown
in England.

‘‘ Yours sincerely,

‘BH, LEIGHTON.”

CHAPTER XI

FRESCOES AND SCULPTURE

ihe large lunettes at South Kensington—‘‘ The Arts of War ”—
_ ‘*The Arts of Peace”—Process by which they were painted
—Decoration of the ceiling of a music-room in New York—
| Fresco of Cupid carrying food for doves—‘‘ The Phcenicians
| bartering with Britons,” a splendid gift to the Royal Ex-
| change—‘‘ The Athlete struggling with a Python,” bought
| by the Chantrey fund—‘‘ The Sluggard,” a fine rendering
| of the stretching position—‘‘ Needless Alarms,” admired by
| Sir John Millais—Design for Mrs. Barrett Browning’s.
| memorial, and that of Major Sutherland Orr—His sketches in
| clay and bronze—The Jubilee Medal—Summary.

E shall now follow his purely decorative

manner shown in his mural frescoes. We
ve seen how he devoted the Saturday after-
bons of the summer of 1866 to painting the
psco of ‘‘ The Wise and Foolish Virgins,” which
rms the altarpiece to Lyndhurst church. Mr.
lnys tells us that ‘‘it was painted with a mixture
}copal, wax, resin, and oil, previously employed
ith success by Mr. Gambier Parry in his decora-
ons for Ely Cathedral.” The larger lunettes in
fe central court at South Kensington repre-
inting the ‘Industrial Arts of War,” and
je ‘‘Industrial Arts of Peace,” are among the
ost characteristic of all his works. In the
bsco ‘‘The Arts of War” (1872-85) we have

109

110 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

a bustling and crowded scene enacted in the
entrance to a tower or fortress of Italian Gothic
architecture. A white marble staircase leads
from the quadrangle to the inner court, and the
whole theme suggests the business attending an
immediate departure to the seat of war. There
are about sixty figures, all wearing the Italian
costume of the fourteenth century. Over a battle-
ment to the right some knights are displaying the
flag that is to lead them to battle, and over the
one to the left the warriors are cleaning their
armour. Speaking roughly, in the group to the
right in the foreground, the weapons are being
chosen and tested; in the one to the left the
warriors are being clad for the forthcoming fight.
We see the armourer giving out swords and
‘crossbows ; he is in the act of discoursing upon
their merits. Some of the figures are girding
on their swords, testing the weapons and balan-
cing their blades. On the other side, the
armour is being tried on a youth as yet un-
accustomed to iron garments; in another group
the corslet is being buckled on a knight who
has grown somewhat stout during his period of
idleness. In front is a group of women stitching
and embroidering the banner that is to lead the
departing hosts to victory. Cypresses standing
against the blue sky give a note of animation to
the colour and spirit of the scene. The whole is
admirable in its massing and in its expression ;
the treatment is severe and elegant, decorative
and monumental. The effect of the colour is
chiefly of dark olive green and citron. It is broad

FRESCOES rit

and luminous, and the types introduced are grace-
ful and diversified.

“The Arts of Peace,” begun in 1873, finished
in 1885, gives a contrasting scene. Here women
are the principal actors, and their occupation
is personal decoration. We are in the women’s
quarter of a Greek house. The courtyard is
shaped like a horseshoe, and curtained off in
tones of golden green. Behind and above it we
catch glimpses of a high hill crowned with
temples, standing out in the lucid atmosphere
of Greece. A boat is moored to the wall, and
skilfully enters into the composition of the design.
The ladies form groups that are full of grace.
Busy men outside help to carry out a conception
almost too academic in its balance. The colour
is warm and sunny, running from white to a
low-toned red. One lady is standing pinning up
her hair, and a child, swathed in draperies, holds
up to her a Corinthian mirror; opposite is a
sitting figure in an elaborately designed chair,
looking at herself in a hand-glass, while her
attendant is adjusting a wreath on her head.
Between these two groups are others in various
attitudes, all bent on self-adornment. A group
in dark red shows the duenna of the party with
a purple veil over her head. She, with one of the
girls, is watching the adjustment of the wreath,
while behind the ladies a damsel, her back turned
to the spectator, is calling to someone outside.
Tall bronze lamps, supported on winged figures,
stand at the points of a semi-circle. The rest of
the scene takes place outside. Groups of lightly

LE2 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

clad men, some to the left attend to the lading of |
a boat with bales of woven materials, some to the

right prepare Grecian pots, highly ornate and

simple ones, laying them out to be carried off in

another boat. All the life of Greece at peace, is

' suggested in this cartoon. Comic engraved masks
are suspended from the pillars and cornices.

Behind are seen two figures weaving at one of
the windows of an upper chamber. In another
we perceive men cleaning the candelabras. Two

children form a group apart ; the boy is painting

a mask, and the little girl is watching, absorbed in

his work. These two noble frescoes may be seen

any day in the Central Court of the South Ken-

sington Museum. They deserve careful study.

We have only given a very superficial description

of them. At Leighton House are studies of the

groups that composed them. Mrs. Lang, in her
monograph for the Art Annual for 1894, tells us

the process in which they were painted.

“A wall is covered With stucco of a porous
nature, so that the colours when laid on may
become one with the wall. It is then washed_
roughly over with a medium composed of gum,
elemi juice, white wax, oil of spike lavender, and
artist’s copal, mixed with turpentine in specific
proportions. Leaving two days for the wall to
become partly dry, a second wash is given, and |
an interval is again left for evaporation to take
place. Finally a mixture is compounded of a
powder of the purest white lead, and gilder’s
whitening, with a little turpentine added, and
with this the wall is entirely covered with as

‘*AND THE SEA GAVE UP THE DEAD THAT WERE IN IT”
Rey. xx. 13

Tate Gallery

FRESCOES 113

many coats as may be considered necessary, time
being left between each for evaporation. Owing
to the roughness of the wall surface, six coats
were used before ‘The Arts of Peace’ could be
begun. The colours (always powdered) are mixed
with the gum elemi, spike oil, wax, and copal,
when they have all been melted up together.”

We must not omit the single figures in mosaic,
““Cimabue” and ‘‘Pisano,” which also ornament
the Central Court of the South Kensington
Museum. Besides this public work there is some
private work to be noticed, the decoration painted
on a gold ground for the ceiling of a music-room
(1886) of a sumptuous mansion in New York. A
life-sized figure of Mnemosyne seated on her
throne between tripods of bronze, her brow
crowned with laurels, rests her chin on her hand.
The thoughtful face, the austerity of her air, are
emphasised by the majestic flow of her. draperies
and by their grave colour. Her two daughters,
Urania and Melpomene, are there ; Melpomene
with an attendant elf carrying a double pipe,
joins in the dance with unfailing spirit. There is
a lovely figure on the left of a woman crowning
herself with roses, and clad with rose-coloured
draperies, smiling down on Love.

Then there is the beautiful fresco of Cupid for
a ballroom. The winged figure is carrying a tray
of food to the doves that come eagerly for it;
one bird on his shoulder is pecking at his mouth;
on either side are large vases filled with roses.

The latest of Leighton’s mural decorations is a
painting of the ‘‘Phcenicians bartering with

I

114 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

Britons” (1895). Perhaps it can scarcely be
reckoned as a fresco, for it is on canvas, but
it is marked by many of the qualities which
distinguish a painting designed to be in relation
to place and surroundings. It is an entirely
academic piece of work. The women of Britain
are suave and charming ladies, tenderly modelled.
They are adorning themselves with some embroi-
dered stuffs which the Pheenicians have brought
for sale. The early Britons are offering skins to
these wily merchants, who are apparently dis-
puting the price asked for them. It was one
of Leighton’s last works, and was a splendidly
generous. gift to the city of London.

SCULPTURE.

In his sculpture Leighton’s classicism appears
unhampered; it is informed with ‘‘style,” a
quality often missing in the work of modern
realists. In sculptured groups it is the type we
look for ; and his work in bronze and clay carries
us back to memorable achievements in antiquity
and claims kinship with them. The statues pre-
sent the ideal form and also an extraordinary
knowledge of anatomy. ‘‘The Athlete Wrestling
with a Python” was shown in 1877. It is a very
forcible and noble example of the struggle of man
with the brute. Many more or less perfect human
beings were models, we feel sure, for this athlete.
Leighton was three years at work on this great
design. The man is represented standing and
swinging to the left on one firmly planted foot. The

{veh RO races

ATHLETE STRUGGLING WITH PYTHON

Tate Gallery

SCULPTURE r15

other touches the earth, its toes are opened by the
energetic action of the body. This forms a great
curve, the shoulders are lifted, the head firmly
thrust forward, the right arm is extended rigidly
grasping the throat of the huge reptile, while the
left keeps with strained action the serpent from
closing its mighty coil round the body. It would
crush the bones and flesh together. The head of
the python with gaping jaws rises fierce but
harmless above the fist that holds it in a relent-
less grasp. It is a very strongly thought out
composition, Greek in the severe spirit of its lines
and in the nobility of its form. The realistic
treatment is displayed in the exactness with
which every muscle and every tendon is moulded
and in its place. The face with all its resolute
determination and energy is unruffled by the
strain. Leighton made careful studies in the
serpent house of the Zoological Gardens for the
python. The statue was bought for £2,000 by
the Chantrey fund. It was the first purchase
made out of it, and it was a worthy one. The
work may be seen at the Tate Gallery.

Also at the gallery may be seen ‘‘ The Slug-
gard,” his other great work in sculpture. It
shows a young man stretching himself. The
arms are raised in a horizontal position and bent,
doubled at the elbow with the hands towards the
neck. The body stands on one foot and is
slightly twisted in the act of yawning. The
statue shows Leighton’s extraordinary knowledge
of anatomy, and his acquaintance with the ideal
form, and is a very fine rendering of the stretching

116 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

position, one that the body can assume for a mo-
ment only. The fine display of line, the play of
muscle, bring out the contrast between the athletic
form of the man and his sloth and languor. At
his feet lies the victor’s garland. ‘‘ Glorious
wreath of laurel-leaves trodden and despised.” A
replica of the statue was in Leighton’s studio.
The idea of it came to the artist one day when
his model, a handsome youth, in the interval of
sitting stretched himself. Leighton, struck by the
fineness of the lines, seized the idea and ex-
pressed it in clay and in bronze.

Another statuette, ‘‘ Needless Alarms,” is the
suave and graceful study of a nude girl alarmed
by the sight of a toad standing on the edge of the
stream, out of which she has just stepped. She
stands 1n a shrinking attitude, looking back at the
alarming creature behind her. The figure is very
pure in line and very chaste in expression. It
was admired by Sir John Millais, who wished to
purchase it. Leighton would not hear of this
and presented it to his friend. Millais, in ex-
change, gave him the picture of ‘‘Shelling Peas.”

Leighton had done memorable work in clay
before trying his hand at statuary. He had de-
signed a medallion for the monument to Mrs.
Barrett Browning, marking her resting-place in
the Protestant Cemetery at Florence; he had also
designed the tomb for Major Sutherland Orr, and
that of Lady Charlotte Greville.

We must not omit to mention the sketches in
clay that he made for the figures and the
accessories of his more important pictures, and

SCULPTURE it7

that he used for the study of drapery. That of
Perseus on his winged steed; of the sleeping
Iphigenia, that the Royal Academy caused to be
cast in bronze after his death; one of Cymon
looking more boorish than he does in the picture;
of Iphigenia’s sleeping attendants, and of the
dog. For the ‘‘Daphnephoria” a lovely group of
maidens singing; and one of the ‘‘ Choragus.”’
There was a sketch of the Andromeda, one of the
monster, and several others, all broadly and freely
handled.

The first study in clay of the ‘‘ Athlete Strug-
gling with a Python” and of the ‘‘ Sluggard,”
were also in the studio. A replica of the
“‘ Athlete”? in marble was commissioned for the
gallery at Copenhagen.

Nor must we forget to mention the medal
commemorating Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, exe-
cuted for Her Majesty’s Government. It repre-
sents Empire enthroned in the centre, holding
the sword of justice in her right hand, while
about her are grouped emblematical figures
representing Commerce, Agriculture, Industry,
Science, Literature, and Art.

The last thing to be said about Leighton is that
his classicism—his art, in fact—for all his devo-
tion to ancient ideals, was incurably modern.
He had the divided nature as fully, perhaps, as it
has been bestowed on any man. On one side, he
saw beauty as a something above nature and
beyond it, and saw in nature itself only a thing to
be fashioned by the artist. On the other side of
him he was a man of the world and of his own

118 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

day. He lived with Phidias and Praxiteles in his
dreams and in his studio, but in his waking life he
was with the men and women of the Victorian
era, with the most select men and women, no
doubt, but emphatically with them. The states-
men, the lawyers, the soldiers, the reigning
beauties of the time were ever with him in spirit,
when he tried to give a classical interpretation
to life. They were one of the two stools of the
proverb, and between them he often came to the
ground. It was not his fault, perhaps; it was
only a condition of the circumstances under which
he worked. Every great epoch of classic revival
has presented the same difficulties. Tennyson
felt them when he tried to revive the Arthurian
legend, another classic form as it presented itself
to his imagination. His Arthur was Victorian
with the whole Round Table to bear him com-
pany. The Arthur of Mallory is still, in the main,
a fierce savage, and orders his massacre of the
innocents with as little compunction as a second
Herod. Arthurian romance is a revel of lust and
blood. The poet had to take this and to purify it
to the modern taste which was also all his own.
He was not of his age for nothing. His Court of
Arthur became the court of a sovereign very much
nearer to our own time, and his pleasures were
purified by the Decalogue, and by all the proprieties
of modern usage. So also Leighton’s ‘‘ Andro-
mache” was any possible woman of Victorian
society who had fallen upon evil days. His
nymphs were rather of the tennis lawn than of °
the fields of ancient Greece, only a touch was

"= yare GIFT

THE SLUGGAKD

Tate Gallery

SCULPTURE ies ee

wanting to convert them into undergraduates of
Girton or of Newnham. One felt that all of them,
gentle and simple, were not the personages of
any other time than his own, and that their
identity with his own time ran through to the
very core of their being. If we could have heard
them speak, while the draperies they wore might
still have been those worn by august creations of
classic fable, their voices would have been those
of a Belgravian drawing-room. To have been a
real classic in spirit, Leighton would have had to
live in isolation from the society and the aims of
his day, and that, of course, was not in any way to
jhis taste. As President of the Royal Academy he
| was essentially of his time, one of the most dis-
\tinguished figures in it, the courtier of art, the
|chairman of the public banquet, the familiar man
jof the world, the greatest of diners out, the com-
‘panion of princes, the paragon of manners in the
highest society of the mind. It would have been
‘beyond mortal man to throw off all these things
Jat will, to be true in spirit to the period of the
\fierce Achilles, the ruthless Hector, the wily
Ulysses, who lived lives without a thought of any
‘of the proprieties known to us.

CHAPTER XII
THE PRESIDENT

No President like him since Reynolds—Duties of a President—
Elected by a majority of thirty-five votes—Care for Art
Education — Impatience of impressionism — Kindness to
students of the R.A. and to outsiders—Kindness to literary
men and to his critics—Watts’s opinion of Leighton—His
admiration of the ‘‘Old Masters” — Zeal in filling the
Winter Exhibition at the R.A.—Art Gallery on the Surrey
side of London—Sunday receptions—Colonel of the Artist
Volunteers Corps—Dance at Mr. Aitchison’s—Reception
at the R.A.— Courage under suffering.

HE was important as an artist, he would have
been important as such in every country
and at any date, but even as an artist he falls into
the second rank when we consider him as
President of the Royal Academy. We have had
no President such as he was since the days of
Reynolds. He was not only great as a President
within the walls of the Academy, but he was
great outside them. He was never below the
dignity of his office. He carried its interests with
him wherever he went, he was always occupied
with its wants and with the manner in which he
could serve them. His presence was felt in a
room; he was distinctly ‘‘a personage,” dealing
in.matters of art as potentate with potentate.
The magnificence of his personal appearance, the

THE EGYPTIAN SLINGER

THE PRESIDENT 121

stately and genial charm of his manner, his
wonderful power of expression in almost every
spoken European language, his habit of contact
with the world, and with those of every rank and
of every degree in it, made him an ideal figurehead
of the art of England. ‘‘ There never was such a
President,” said an R.A. to me, ‘‘and he has
made it difficult for anyone to succeed him. He
never missed a council meeting, he was the most
punctual of any of the artists present. He was
there at the very stroke of the clock, and thus he
screwed everyone up to the mark. Every hour
of the day we miss him; no one can come up to
him.” And Mr. Watts spoke of him, with falter-
ing voice, of his handsomeness, his knowledge of
languages, his charm. ‘‘It would seem as if
Nature had heaped everything that she could
upon this child of fortune.”

The duties of a President are arduous and
diversified. There is at least one council held
every three weeks, during the working year of
the Academy, from November to late in July.
There are the general assemblies for the election
of new members. There is a time appointed,
about a fortnight in April, when the President
has to attend daily at Burlington House to assist
at the selection of pictures to be hung at the
Spring Exhibition, and give, if necessary, his
casting vote. He presides every year at the
banquet which inaugurates the opening of the
exhibition, and there he has to propose the toasts
and make the speeches proper to the occasion.
He has to act as host at the conversazione that

122 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

marks the close of the picture season. Finally,
he has to supervise the Academy schools and
distribute the prizes to students, whom he
addresses at these yearly functions on the sub-
ject of the progress displayed. To these duties
Leighton added every second year that of deliver-
ing to them a long and fully prepared discourse.

It was in 1878, when Leighton was in Lerici,
that the news reached him that Sir Francis Grant -
was dead. ‘‘ The President is dead! Long live
the President!” said Costa, giving him back the
telegram that brought the tidings. Leighton
knew that he had every prospect of being elected.
He stayed on, nevertheless, for several weeks,
where he was, painting heads and landscape back-
grounds. He did not canvass; he did not fret or
worry himself about the coming election.

In the following November he was elected by a
majority of thirty-five votes, five of them having
been given to Mr. Horsley, who represented the old
school, the one in favour of letting things remain
as they were. Leighton accepted the high honour
to which he was called, resolved to fulfil its duties
and to carry out its highest aims. He received
the honour of knighthood, as was customary.

All that he did as President cannot be over-
estimated. His influence over the art education
of his country was specially noteworthy. He
had already, as an R.A., taken his share as
visitor to the schools. The duty of the visitor
extends over one month, during which he poses
two models. ‘‘ Leighton,” said a Royal Acade-
mician to me, ‘fused to pose the nude model,

STUDY FOR DRAPERY OF CHILD SINGING IN THE PROCESSION
OF THE “DAPIINEPHORIA”

> i

ee ee

eee

ira

THE PRESIDENT 123

draping it for the second half of the time
devoted to his superintendence. He held greatly
to the study of drapery, and he often made the
students consecrate a week to its study alone.”
After he was elected President, his duties as a
visitor to the schools ceased. But he super-
_ vised the whole system of education given in
them. He was strongly against the age limit for
admission being altered, drawing the line rigidly
at the age of twenty-three. ‘‘ There are things
in the painter’s handicraft,” he would say, ‘‘ that
- must be learned in youth.” On the Continent the
‘age limit does not exist, but this he held to be
a mistake. ‘‘Let the students get over the
technical difficulties at a comparatively early
age; let them, above all things, learn to draw.”
He exacted a high standard of work to be sent
in. His own extraordinary power of taking
pains, so richly illustrated in his sketches,
made him impatient of slovenliness and imper-
fectly realised impressions. His catholic taste
was as genuine as it was spontaneous. He
would, and did, admire different methods and
different aims to his own, but he opposed severely
the slapdash methods of some of the students of
the R.A. schools. ‘‘Learn to draw correctly,
facility is sure to follow,” he would say to these
impatient young spirits, restive under control.
Impressionism, he was persuaded, was doing
harm to tyros in art. It seemed to him nothing
less than impertinence for a student to set up
as being an impressionist before he had learnt to
see nature and to understand its complexities.

124 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

His kindness to students was inexhaustible.
Many have been the encouraging words spoken
at the crucial moment of despondency; the
most valued assistance given at a time when,
without some help, the student must give up the
struggle. Thus one evening, when he had been
awarding prizes, he was walking arm in arm with
Millais down the long galleries when he caught
sight of a poorly and shabbily dressed lad, slink-
ing away as if eager to escape. Leighton dropped
Millais’s arm, darted across the vestibule, caught
up the dejected youth, and leading him back into
the first room, made him sit down. He took a seat
beside him, and, putting his arm on the top of
the ottoman, resting his head on his hand, he
began to talk rapidly and earnestly. The listener
pulled himself together after a while, and when
they both rose, the cloud seemed to have passed
from him and he was another being. Leighton
shook hands with him, and the youth went out
with hope revived and with his prospects lightened.
Nor was his kindness limited to the students
of the Royal Academy. He was ever ready to
give advice to those who sought it; all he asked
for from them, in return, was punctuality. He
would expect them at a certain time, and be ready
then to judge their drawings and paintings. In-
numerable are the instances of his unfailing and
generous helpfulness. He usually used to appoint
nine o’clock in the morning to see such visitors.
My sister was one of those who went, and received
his kindness in boundless measure. She would
arrive to the minute, and to the minute he was

THE PRESIDENT 125

ready. With infinite patience he would advise
her, he would praise and blame with a frankness
that nothing could check, for he loved the truth
as an integral part of that beauty which it was
his aim to serve. He was very simple in his
ways, and he would go down on his knees or sit
on the floor examining the canvases she brought.
She would say jokingly that she had had the
President of the Royal Academy at her feet. He
would write his judgments to her, if he could not
see her. In one letter, after he has minutely gone
over her painting, he speaks of the half-tones
as a ‘‘stumbling-block” to all students, and he
tells her that he himself has to exert the greatest
vigilance in painting them. In one letter in which
he announces to her that her first picture is hung
at the Royal Academy, just a little head, ‘‘it
is not much, but it is a beginning,” he said.
Another time he sends her a letter written on
black-edged paper. She had asked him if she
was not accepted to be sure to let her know the
fatal tidings on mourning paper, and he, in the
midst of all his occupations, had remembered the
request and had acceded to it.

Nor was it to students and artists only that he
extended his generous kindness ; there were other
toilers in the field who got from him precious help
and sympathy. A literary man who has since
reached high distinction, and who does not wish
his name to appear, has told me how once, when
he was still very young, he came to the lowest
ebb of his resources. He was a friend of
Rossetti, and was acquainted with other men of

126 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

note; but he owed money to his landlady, his
manuscripts came back with ruthless regularity,
and so he resolved to give up trying and to enlist
as a soldier. On the dismal November afternoon
that he had come to this determination a carriage
drew up at his door, and his landlady came up to
tell him a gentleman wished to see him. She
gave him the card, and he read on it the name of
Sir Frederic Leighton. ‘‘I shall never forget the
impression he made on me as he entered my
shabby room. It was as if a prince of fairy tale
had entered it. He told me that he had just left
Rossetti, and that he wished to know me. For
more than two hours he sat there talking and
making me talk, and I found myself telling him
things I had never told to mortal man before. I
was too poor to offer him so much as a cup of
tea, but he did not seem to be aware of the
omission. His words revived me; he told me
that I must not give up hope. He had had his
struggles too. I must have faith, and my hour
would come—it was bound to come. He made
me promise to go to him before I gave up the
struggle. His words had virtue in them. I
remember when he left, my heart was beating;
life seemed altered. I would try again, but
whether I succeeded or failed did not seem at
that moment to matter. It was the goodness,
the sweetness, the ungrudging human kindness of
my visitor that had worked the miracle of hope.
By a curious coincidence the very next day the
tide of my fortunes turned.” But my friend has
never forgotten the inestimable goodness of Sir

THE PRESIDENT 127

Frederic Leighton, devoting more than two hours
of his busy and brilliant life carrying cheer to a
desolate stranger. Another anecdote may be told
here, for it belongs to Leighton’s artistic career.
Among his critics there was one who pursued
him with relentless rigour. A personal grievance
seemed to be hidden in the tone of his acid art
criticisms. The man suddenly fell grievously ill,
and was reduced to poverty. Leighton heard of
it and went to see him. He came with eager

offers of help. The critic asked him if he knew
- to whom he spoke. ‘‘I know,” said Leighton ;
‘but that has nothing to do with it. I do not
deny that you have said things about me and my
art that do not appear to me to be justified—in-
deed, they are not justified. But you and I are
working together for the same end; our opinions
are different, but the end is the same, that of
serving art. Let us forget everything except
that you are ill. Let me help you. You need
help and rest at the present moment.” And help
and rest were forthcoming. The critic went for
some months to the sea, and received from
Leighton the boon of renewed vigour. This
came from a man of a quick and sensitive nature.
**7 suffer from irritability,” Leighton said to
Watts; ‘‘all my life seems spent in trying to
conquer my temper. Unless I am mindful it gets
the better of me.” ‘‘ But I never saw in him
any sign of irritability,” said Mr. Watts to me.
‘IT knew him well ever since he left Rome; I
knew him, and I think I saw him every day. I
never once saw any sign of irritability in him.

128 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

He may have felt it, but he was so self-disciplined
that he never showed it. He was the most
perfect character I ever knew.”

To his more personal relations there were added
his social relations on a large scale. His keen
interest in the welfare of art showed itself more
especially in the zeal he expended in getting up
the Winter Exhibition of the works of old masters
and deceased British artists at the Royal Academy.
He valued the influence of the old masters, he
believed in acquiring ‘‘style” from the study
of their works. Every year he went to Italy,
managing to take some days from his holiday
to devote to the study of the painters he loved.
At Spoleto he would go and see Filippo Lippi,
who, to quote his own words, ‘‘had clothed in
forms of art the spirit of St. Francis”; at Assisi
Giotto, Cimabue, Simone Memmi, ‘‘the champion
of militant orthodoxy,” and the saintly Fra
Angelico. Perugia was a royal treasure-house of
art. At Florence there was Masaccio; above all
there was Raphael, ‘‘brother of Mozart and
Sophocles.”” But what he loved more than
anything else was the unfinished picture of the
‘* Adoration”? by Leonardo. At Rome he placed
first on his list Michael Angelo at the Sistine.
‘*T stand aghast at the mighty genius of the
Sistine,” he said to Mr. Pepys Cockerell a few
days before his death. Then there were the
Donatellos that he studied and loved, and that
influenced his art.

In the years when he was free from the pre-
paration of his discourse to the students of the

“

Wold

1

Va

”

MOT SHIGALS GAdVUG AHL

he Mew ei

THE PRESIDENT 129

Royal Academy he would wander-further afield ;
he would visit Chiusi, Siena, and San Gemignano.
The itinerary of these journeys to the old masters
was planned in every detail, each half-hour being
a fragment of his mosaic of time. His com-
panion in Italy was his friend Signor Costa. To
be more sure that there should be no lagging
on the way, he would merrily assume the part
of courier. Signor Costa tells us directly ‘‘ we
arrived at Chiusi he never failed to jump from
the train, returning quickly with two baskets of
luncheon for ourselves.” The enthusiasm for the
great masters of Italy especially induced him to
work for the spread of it among his countrymen.
He has travelled miles to see a picture in some
private gallery, to judge of it himself, and to
apply to its owner for permission to show it in
the Winter Exhibition at the Royal Academy.
He was fond of quoting a passage from a magni-
ficent speech of Agrippa, which he said he would
like to prefix to the catalogues of the Winter
Exhibition, in which Agrippa descants on the far
greater use of works of art when seen in public
places than when exiled in far-off country houses.
Nor was it only there, where he was leader that
he served art. Wherever there was a movement
made to bring together a collection of pictures
in order to carry the joy and the refinement of
art into the lives of the poor, he was either at
its head or its principal helper. He spoke at the
first meeting of the Kyrle Society, but he im-
plored the amateurs not to flood the market with
inferior work. Sir Wyke Bayliss tells us of an

Ik

130 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

effort made to form an art gallery on the Surrey
side of London. William Rosetta, a follower of
Morris, had gathered round him some working
men, and had done much to waken in them a
sense of the beauty and the charm of painting.
Lady Burne-Jones helped the movement heartily.
Rosetta had taken an empty shop in a crowded
and miserable neighbourhood. Leighton was
asked to be chairman of the committee. He at
once accepted. He was as attentive, as courteous,
and as punctual there, sitting in the midst of
empty packing-cases, as he was at the sittings
of the committees of the R.A. Soon the walls
were covered with pictures from Leighton, from
' Watts, and from Burne-Jones.

It was at Perugia that he composed his dis-
courses to the students of the Royal Academy.
The pains he took to make these lectures perfect
as works of oratorical art his friends well know.
These addresses, treatises upon various periods
of historic artistic activity, we shall treat of in
a separate chapter.

He always received on Sundays. His studio
was crowded with strangers of many nation-
alities, and it was a remarkable sight to see the
host welcoming his guests and speaking to each
man in his own tongue, equally welcoming all and
equally at home in every language.

When he was elected President he gave up
the colonelship of the Artist Volunteer Corps, for
which he had laboured strenuously for many
years, raising it in numbers as in efficiency, and
climbing through its successive official grades.

. YOIGILV4,, 4O SNOILISOd NOA SATIGALS

THE PRESIDENT 131

He was passionately convinced that every English-
man should be ready to serve his country in
‘arms, and he gave up the post with reluctance.
On his retirement the battalion presented him
with a sword of honour. ‘‘He was the best
colonel we ever had, and he knew moré about
warfare than I do,” said a man well versed in
the science of battle. He got his knowledge of
arms by the same means that he acquired it in
art—by enthusiasm and by study. ‘‘No man can
be too enthusiastic’ was a well-known saying of
his, and he applied it to every enterprise. ‘‘ One
evening,” said Mr. Aitchison, ‘‘ we had a dance
in my rooms. Leighton was very fond of
dancing, and danced beautifully. The time went
on till it was too late to send for a cab. We
thought it would do us good to have a walk. It
was midsummer time, and already, although it
was but four o’clock in the morning, the sun was
up- and threw a flood of light over the freshness
of the city. ‘I cannot walk any more,’ said
Leighton, when we reached the Marble Arch;
‘IT have to be, at half-past six, at the Knights-
bridge Barracks, to go through the evolutions
officers of the Volunteers must practise. I am
no good without sleep. I can even now have
but two hours’ rest, for a model comes at half-
past eight.’ He drove home and fell asleep at
once. His unalterable strength of will stood him
in good stead in the matter of rest. What he
wanted to do he did do; his was the hand of
iron in the velvet glove.”

It is impossible to forget him standing, as

132 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

host, wearing his chain of office, with the heavy
medal attached to it, at the top of the stairs
of Burlington House, receiving the guests who
trooped in. We felt the spell of his manner as
he greeted princes, ministers, ambassadors, the
highest ladies of the land, and art students with
the same cordial charm. He was the right man
in the right place—the President who could be
the courtier, as he was the great painter and the
great teacher of art. He could command the
respect and admiration of foreigners as he could
dominate the group of English painters who
acknowledged him their chief. Even when the
agony of that dire disease—angina pectoris—was
upon him, he never shirked his duties. The artists
remember how during the last year that he sat in
Burlington House, judging the pictures sent up
for exhibition, when the agony of the terrible
spasm was upon him, he would bear it with the
utmost reserve and heroism. ‘‘ Do not mind me,”
he would say, making a sign with his hand, and
turning his head away. It was only by the drops
of sweat on his forehead, by the drawn pallor of
his features that they knew what suffering he had
gone through.

CHAPTER XIII
LORD LEIGHTON’S ADDRESSES

Place as an orator. First address: The position of art in
the world—Vicissitudes of the artistic spirit—The evolution
and the perplexities of the modern student—Sincerity, the
first condition of artistic greatness. Second address: On
the relation of artists to morals and religion—The special
importance for the English mind—Ethical theory of art
examined by history—Evidence unfavourable—Art’s proper
sphere. Third address: Relation of art to time, place, and
racial circumstance—Tracing its history in Egypt, Chaldeea,
and Greece—Simplicity and truth, highest attributes of the
art of Greece. Fourth address: Art in ancient Italy—
Various theories of the origin of the Etruscans—The tomb
of Volumnius Violens, near Perugia—Art of Rome closely
allied to national temper—The art of portraiture—Love
of gold destroyed Roman glory. Fifth address: Art in
modern Italy, Tuscany and the Renaissance—Two currents
perceptible in the Renaissance— Leonardo da Vinci —
Raphael—Michael Angelo. Sixth address: The art of Spain
—Invasion of the Moors and struggle for their expulsion
leads to the growth of national self-consciousness and of
religious zeal—Complete embodiment of the genius of Spain
in Zurbaran—Murillo inferior to Zurbaran—Superiority of
Velasquez as a painter—The sacrifice of art to pursuit of
royal favours. Seventh address: Art of France—Unin-
terrupted development—Its first achievement—The art of
the enameller and the potter—Watteau, the interpreter of
the grace of his epoch. Ninth address: The art of Germany
—Music its highest artistic expression— Burghers and
artisans the lovers of German art—Albrecht Diirer, typical

133

134 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

German, rather than Holbein—German goldsmith’s work.
Leighton’s prose as decorative as his painting—His speeches
at the annual banquet of the R.A.

HE time has come to consider the position

of Leighton as an orator, and primarily in
regard to his well-known biennial addresses to
the students of the Royal Academy. These
lectures—as they may be also called—were not
exactly presidential, though they were given by
him as head of the art of his country. It is a
popular mistake to suppose that the President
need address the students every two years. Sir
Joshua Reynolds, it is true, gave lectures, but I
know of no other President who did—certainly
Sir Francis Grant did not. Leighton gave them
for his own pleasure. They are highly elaborate
in the best sense, very learned and eloquent in a
certain stately way, and are everything that a
master of the art of writing could make them.
The moral bearing of art was a burning question,
very much discussed in those days. The subject
probably attracted him the more that he was of
all living Englishmen one of the most competent
to the task. They are perhaps too remote in
interest for the majority of the young students
to whom they were ostensibly addressed, but in
the audience there were many who could follow,
and not a few educated outsiders. His theme,
taking it as a whole, was the relation of art to
morality and religion, illustrated by its various
forms of development in the Eastern and Western
world. The root-idea became somewhat obscured
by the mass of historical and descriptive detail,

ADDRESSES 35

which served more or less to illustrate it; but
there can be no doubt that it remained with him
as an underlying inspiration, and would have re-
appeared in his final summary if he had lived to
complete the work.

In the first discourse, given on December 1oth,
1879, Leighton set himself to estimate the posi-
tion of aft in the world. He spoke of the artistic
spirit. ‘‘The spirit of spontaneous, unquestion-
ing rejoicing in production, which is still the
privilege of youth, and which, even now, the
very strong sometimes carry with them through
their lives, was, indeed, when Art herself was in
her prime, the normal and constant condition of
the artistic temper, and shone out in all artistic
work.”

It traced the evolution of art, architecture,
sculpture, painting, especially the evolution of
painting in Italy, ‘‘an evolution which we pursue
in singular fulness of gradation, from Giotto and
his followers, through the quattrocentisti and the
forerunner Leonardo, to the triumphant days of
Raphael, Titian, and Correggio. We are not less
struck and fascinated by the varieties of local
flavour and distinctive characteristics which enrich
and diversity it.”

He showed the perplexities of the modern
student of art living in an age that has no love
of beauty, and in which there is everywhere a
narrow utilitarianism which does not include
gratification of the artistic sense amongst things
useful ; and in answer to the question which the
ardent young artist asks himself, he showed

136 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

‘that art is fed by the forces which lie in the
depths of our nature, and which are as old as
man himself, of which, therefore, we need not
doubt the durability ; and to the question whether
Art, with all its blossoms, has not one root, the
answer we shall see to be: Assuredly it has, for
its outward modes of expression are many and
various, but its underlying vital motives are the
same.”

Individuality is the stamp of genius, but it
must be of an individual controlled by discipline
and inspired by a great sincerity of invention.

Without sincerity of emotion no gift, how-
ever facile and specious, will avail you to win the
lasting sympathies of men, for, as Goethe has
truly said—

‘The chord that wakes in kindred hearts a tone,
Must first be tuned and vibrate in your own.”

The second lecture, delivered December roth,
1881, dealt specially with the relation of art to
morals and religion. He dwelt upon the importance
of that relation to such a people especially as are
the English, for there is ‘‘no country in which the
task of unravelling the complex question of the
true relation of morality and religion to art is
one of greater delicacy.”” The two theories that
the first duty of art is the inculcation of a moral
lesson, and that art is absolutely unconnected
with ethics, is really the subject of this lecture.
In a passage of great eloquence he describes a
‘host of divinely endowed artists testifying in
unnumbered masterpieces to the glory of the

ADDRESSES 137

Almighty and of His saints. We see them hand-
ing down, undimmed, from generation to genera-
tion, the lamp of their steadfast faith ; and from
the harmonious concert of their works, as from a
vast consenting choir, does not a solemn anthem
seem to roll across the centuries, crying from a
thousand throats, ‘Hosannah! Hosannah in the
highest!’’’ But he shows that this didactic theory
is disproved ; for in the Flemish school there is
Rembrandt and Rubens, whose work is far re-
moved from the religious influence, and in the
Spanish school Murillo and Velasquez. The
language of art is not the appointed vehicle of
abstract moral truth. Emotion, which can be
communicated only through the sense of sight,
is its proper sphere ; and yet while the inculcation
of these truths is not the object of art, it is vain
to say that the artist’s work is uninfluenced by
his moral tone.

‘* Believe me, whatever of dignity, whatever of
strength we have within us will dignify and will
make strong the labours of our hands ; whatever
littleness degrades our spirit will lessen them
and drag them down. Whatever noble fire is in
our hearts will burn also in our work, whatever
purity is ours will chasten and exalt it; for, as
we are, so our work is, and what we sow in our
lives, that, beyond a doubt, we shall reap for
good or for ill in the strengthening of whatever
gifts have fallen to our lot.”

The third lecture, delivered December roth,
1883, dealt with the relation of art to time, place,
and racial circumstance, and traced its history in

138 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

Egypt, Chaldza, and Greece. In Egypt it was
the history of a people pre-eminently pious, who
dwelt constantly in thought on the life after
death. ‘‘ Piety was printed on all their works.”
Their art was an entirely spontaneous and sincere
expression of the national temper, ‘‘ should it
not convey to us a sense of strength, of dignity,
of stability, and of repose? And would not the
consciousness of unlimited resources find ex-
pression in a tendency to the excessive in size?
Well, these are precisely the characteristics which
we never fail to find in the monuments of Egypt,
and in so much of her plastic art as is not purely
domestic in character and descriptive of private
liter?

He then traced the Chaldean and Assyrian art
as practically one growth. That of the Chaldean
is religious in spirit, that of the Assyrian is
martial. ‘‘ For Assyria, in the days of its great-
ness, was as a vast camp spread about the
throne of a fighting monarch ; and the Assyrians,
a breed of warriors fierce and without fear, cast-
ing down their enemies, in the words of Isaiah,
‘as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm.’”
It was warlike and splendid. The temples were
also observatories. In the mystic Chaldeans
‘‘their stories were seven in number, the sacred
seven; and each story bore the colour proper
to one of the heavenly spheres. In Assyria
we, for the first time, see the arch used as an
important decorative and decorated feature.” He
then passed on to the art of Greece, ‘‘an art
that in its serenity, its directness, its measure,

ADDRESSES 139

and its lofty idealism was the expression and
faithful image of what was best in the Hellenic
mind and spirit.” He showed how the Athenian
education was based on the ideal of a citizen
in the free state, and in the sculptor’s art you
feel how it ‘‘mirrored at its best the mind of
Greece.” In the painted earthenware preserved
in such profusion in the Etruscan tombs we see
the Greek draughtsman in his most spontaneous
mood. ‘‘Simplicity and Truth were the highest
attributes of Greek art.”

In the fourth address, December ioth, 1885,
Leighton discoursed ‘‘On Art in Ancient Italy,
the Etruscans, Rome.” Who were the Etruscans,
and whence did they come? He admitted that
of all the riddles which the Sphinx of History
has propounded to modern ingenuity, none is
perhaps more perplexing than that one is to
answer. ‘‘I have said that great as was their
propensity to art, the inborn gift was not strong
within them ; they initiated nothing ; they assimi-
lated and modified the art of others—modified
it, indeed, so that their productions are marked
with a strong and unmistakable national stamp.
Nevertheless, this stamp, even when their art was
at its best, was, it must be admitted, always the
stamp of inferiority and the sign of an uncouth
people.”

The examples of Etruscan works to which he
refers are the ‘‘two lovely bronze mirrors, pre-
served respectively at Perugia and at Berlin,
representing—one, Helen, between Castor and
Pollux ; the other, Bacchus, Semele, and Apollo.”

140 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

There is a very eloquent description of the tomb
of Volumnius Violens, near Perugia: ‘‘ Raised
on a rude basement, the body of the monument
figures the entrance to a vault; in the centre,
painted in colours that have nearly faded, appears
a doorway, within the threshold of which four
female figures gaze wistfully upon the outer
world; on either side two-winged genii, their
brows girt with the never-failing Etruscan
serpents, but wholly free from the quaintness
of early Etruscan treatment, sit cross-legged,
watching, torch in hand, the gate from which
no living man returns. Roughly as they are
hewn, it would be difficult to surpass the stateli-
ness of their aspect or the art with which they
are designed; Roman gravity, but quickened
with Etruscan fire, invests them. A new artistic
mood seems to be struggling in them for ex-
pression, and our thoughts are irresistibly carried
forward to the supreme sculptor whom the Tuscan
land was one day to bear, and in the furnace of
whose genius all the elements of Etruscan art
were to be fused into a new type of unsurpassed
sublimity.”’

We then pass on to the art of Rome and its
close relation to the national temper. He shows
that the intellect of Rome, the subjection of the
individual to the State, the spirit of self-sacrifice
nourished by war, bred in its people a certain con-
temptuous indifference towards art. Portraiture
alone is to be excepted. The Roman was buried
as he had lived in the eyes of his forefathers.

‘“You perceive what an impulse was here fur-

ADDRESSES 141

nished to the art of portraiture—to a vivid and
faithful record of the lineaments of those in the
light of whose example every Roman—as long as
Roman virtue lasted—strove to live his life. Ac-
cordingly we find that the one branch of sculpture
in which Rome achieved any excellence, is precisely
this—vivid and faithful portraiture. And in this
development of art the impulse was, I repeat,
ethic, not zsthetic.”

Architecture was also the expression of the
high moral sense of the Roman. But still, with
them ‘‘art was not vernacular.” Their purest
taste, their brightest gifts of mind found no
utterance in it. At the end of the lecture he
warned the students against the insidious lust for
gold which had destroyed Roman glory.

The fifth lecture, delivered December roth,
1887, treats of ‘‘Art in Modern Italy, Tuscany
and the Renaissance.”’ It is on the second period
of Roman history that Leighton dwelt, and espe-
cially on the art of Tuscany. The characteristic
which Christianity had stamped upon art was the
impression of asceticism. The ideal was in
direct hostility to that of Greece, which was the
perfection of human form.

**The faith of the Christian, drawing his gaze
away from the present life, taught him to see in
this fair world a temporary dwelling, a scene of
trial only, and of preparation ; lifted for him the
veil of a life beyond the grave, towards the
undying joys of which he was taught to strain
his spiritual gaze—a life which was within the
reach of all, and of which the alternative was

142 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

everlasting punishment.. Christians were taught
that a fount unquenchable of love was poured out
upon them from on high, a love binding them in
a common bond of brotherhood, a love of which
the reflection should go out again from each of
them upon his fellow-men. He was taught,
further, that the things of this world are a
mirage and a snare, and the enjoyment of them
culpable, a bar to the purifying of the spirit of
salvation.”

It was upon this state that the Renaissance
burst with its two distinct currents of forces—
‘‘the impulse towards the scientific study of
Nature, and the impulse to reinstate the classic
spirit.” Dante stands on the threshold of the
Renaissance, and with Petrarch the new order
begins.

‘“*To Tuscan artists the new movement brought
the love of Nature and the light of science.”
He illustrates the influence of the Renaissance
by the work of three great typical artists —
Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo.
He showed that Tuscan art, like that of Greece,
reflected what was highest and purest in the spirit
of the people.

His sixth address, December 1oth, 1889, dealt
with the art of Spain. After setting forth as
usual the relation of the surroundings to the
artistic production of the people, Leighton traced
the early history of the Spaniards. With the
invasion of the Moors came a prolonged struggle
for their expulsion, and it is in this struggle that
the great national consciousness and national

ADDRESSES 143

pride awoke. It was in the resolve to get rid of
the invader that Spanish Catholicism developed.
In the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, the
expulsion of the Moors was effected. Catholicism
is the central fact of the character of the Spaniard.
‘The end and aim which to the Spaniard hallowed
every act was the glorification and spread of his
faith in its*untainted purity. The significance in
the eyes of Isabel of the discovery “of the New
World was mainly that it extended to another
hemisphere the sway and lordship of the Cross.”
The churches proclaim the glory of that religious
zeal. Leighton spoke of the splendid ‘‘ retablos ”
and of the ‘‘rejas,” noble metal screens lighting
up the gloom of the cathedrals, ‘‘ with definite
intent to enhance the mystery of the sacrifice at
the high altar.” An impenetrable mystery hangs
over the history of Spanish art till the end of
the fifteenth century. He traced its obscure
and tortuous course. At last we come to Zur-
baran, the man who seems to have resumed in
himself the complex elements of the Spanish
genius. In Velasquez, Spanish as he is to the
finger-tips, this comprehensiveness is not found.
“Of Velasquez all was Spanish, but Zurbaran
was all Spain.”” Murillo ‘‘had neither the imagina-
tion nor the sustained virility of style of the son
of the peasant from Estremadura.” In his
grave simplicity Velasquez is unsurpassed. Like
Murillo he cared for the picturesqueness of low
life, and he has painted some pictures of the
most naked realism ; but above all things he was
a Court painter. ‘‘ The wizardly and the luscious

144 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

fascination of the brush of this most modern of
the old masters’? was put to the service of the
King and Court. ‘‘Spanish superstition had
developed a tendency to subordinate everything
to the pursuit of royal favour.” He canvassed
and he obtained at Court a post of an onerous
and a wholly prosaic character, the office of a
sort of purveyor and quartermaster. °It is this
which explains a sense of haste, the evidence of
a too scanty leisure in his work. ‘‘ Truly has it
been said art requires the whole man.”

The ‘‘Art of France” was the address de-
livered on December 1oth, 1891. Leighton traced
its uninterrupted development. Its first pre-
eminent achievements were in architecture. In
the great cathedrals Gothic architecture reached
its height in an amazingly short space of time.
‘‘ Between the great reign of Philippe Auguste
and that of Louis the Saint, nearly all the great
cathedrals of France were begun or reached
completion.” He enumerated some of the noblest
cathedrals, and he then traced the influence of
the Renaissance when the building of palaces
preceded that of churches, the keynote being the
assertion of the beauty of life and the dignity of
man.

‘““The main determining motive of artistic
activity under Francis I. was the ambition of the
king and his nobles to multiply places of delight
for their residence, especially in the country, and
to replace by sights of beauty, such as they had
learnt to love and covet in Italy, the moated
gloom of the ancestral chateaux, built and well

ADDRESSES 145

suited for purposes of protection and defence,
but little in harmony with the tastes of the
pleasure-loving Court and the light-hearted young

_king who led it.”

The wonder of glass windows which had

brightened the gloom of the ancient cathedrals

now gave place to the art of the enameller, also
to that of the potter, Bernard de Palissy and
Hélene de Hangest, to whom is now ascribed the
exquisite ware of Oiron known as ‘“‘faiénce
Henri II.” Touching upon painting he noted
the reign of Louis XIV., when there flourished
Nicholas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, noble ex-
ceptions at a time when art was suffering from
a widespread pompousness and artificiality.

In the reign of Louis XV., with its utter re-
laxation of all restraints of life, we find Chardin
rendering simple homely scenes of humble life,
and Watteau the truest interpreter of what is
gracious and dainty in that epoch. ‘‘ We find
in his work, indeed, no high ideal, no strong
imaginative fire—how should we find them, see-
ing what he portrayed ?—but in the vivacity and
grace of his drawing, in the fascination of his
harmonies, rich and suave at once, in the fidelity
with which he reflected his times without hinting
at their coarseness, this wizard of the brush
remains one of the most interesting, as he is one
of the most fascinating masters of his country’s
art.”” The lecture was principally addressed to
the young architects, and it was architecture that
was its chief topic. But still, as he said in con-
clusion, the same spirit is expressed in various

L

146 FREDERIC: LEIGHTON

garbs. ‘‘And the characteristics of that spirit
are a masculine independence, a tenacious grasp
of central principles, a fearless sincerity in ex-
pression, a scorn of shams, and trust in truth.”

‘C Art in Germany” was the address delivered
on the 9th December, 1893. He dwelt on the high
quality of art in Germany, and yet he showed
that, as a whole, the nation is defective in the
esthetic inspiration. It is music which is the
highest artistic expression of the German mind.

‘¢ Surely the noblest and the fullest expression
of the deep elements of poetry, which lie at the
roots of the German nature, has not been con-
veyed to the world through the means of form
and colour: it is not on waves of light but on
waves of sound that it has been given to Germans
to carry us into purest regions of esthetic joy.”

Art reached its earliest maturity in the region
watered by the Rhine. Everything there con-
spired to favour its growth; ‘‘the wealth and
power of the cities that rose along the river’s
bank—seats of mighty bishoprics, vying one
with the other in pomp and splendour, such as
Mayence, Cologne, and Spires. Accordingly the
churches of the Rhineland form, as a whole, the
most imposing group in the Romanesque archi-
tecture of Germany.”

Gothic architecture is an importation from
France into Germany, although Goethe and
others maintain that it is indigenous to their
country. The German architect had a passion
for ornamentation, and the unrestrained expres-
sion of the scroll-work is remarkable in the

ADDRESSES 147

Gothic period. He showed that the Renaissance
did not reach Germany till nearly a hundred years
later than the date of its appearance in Italy. It
was the burgher and the artisan who were the true
‘German artists and lovers of art. Sculpture was
often rude and clumsy. In painting there was an
obscure school at Nuremberg that developed when
Albrecht Direr came. He is the typical German
artist, far more so than his great contemporary
Holbein.

‘“He was a man of a strong and upright
nature, bent on pure and high ideals, a man
ever seeking—if I may use his own characteristic
expression—to make known through his work the
mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart.
He was a thinker, a theorist, and, as you know,
a writer. Like many of the great artists of the
Renaissance, he was steeped also in the love of
science. His work was in his own image; it
was, like nearly all German art, primarily ethic
in its complexion; like all German art it bore
traces of foreign influence—drawn, in his case,
first from Flanders and later from Italy. In his
work, as in all German art, the national character
asserted itself above every trammel of external
influence. Superbly inexhaustible as a designer,
as a draughtsman he was powerful, thorough,
and minute to a marvel, but never without a
certain, almost caligraphic, mannerism of hand,
wanting in spontaneous simplicity—never broadly
serene. In his colour he was rich and vivid, not
always unerring as to his harmonies, not alluring
in his execution—withal a giant.”

148 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

Leighton touched upon the beautiful gold-
smith’s work and iron work, upon the adornment
of all things pertaining to civic and private life.
Then came the long eclipse of all artistic pro-
ductiveness during the Thirty Years’ War—a war
that brought ruin to Germany, ‘‘and a long
eclipse to its intellectual work.”

Here the addresses end. The work he had
planned was interrupted. He would have traced
the history of the relation of art to its surround-
ings in many countries, but the fatal malady was
upon him, and then death came.

Nothing can surpass the felicity of the lan-
guage in these lectures. Speaking of Egypt, he
says: ‘“Those whose fortune it has been to stand
by the base of the Great Pyramid of Khoofoo
and look up at its far summit flaming in the
violet sky, or to gaze on the wreck of that
solemn watcher of the rising run, the giant
Sphynx of Gizeh, erect still, after sixty centuries
in the desert’s slowly rising tide, or who have
rested in the shade of the huge shafts which
tell of the pomp and splendour of hundred-gated
Thebes, must, I think, have received impressions
of majesty and of enduring strength which will
not fade within their memory.”

Examples such as this could be multiplied. We
see that, subject, of course, to the objection that will
be taken to them as to their being occasionally too
ornate, these discourses are, in that respect, only
part of all his life’s work. They share his general
characteristic, and by that characteristic they must
stand or fall. His prose is apt to be as decorative

ADDRESSES 149

as his painting, and we have no right to complain
that in either case they are not something else.
We must accept his premises or we shall never be
able to reason with him, or reason about him at
all. He took immense pains with his addresses,
composing them as he did his pictures with endless
studies of the most elaborate description, and
with a structural scheme which was only a less
wonderful one than Nature’s own scheme for the
making of a planet.

His presidential address at the Art Congress at
Liverpool is a model of a fine ideal expressed in
balanced phrases, and enriched with noble meta-
phor. In his speech at the formation of the Kyrle
Society, he struck a timely note of warning against
*‘flooding the market with rubbish.” There re-
main his after-dinner speeches at the Royal
. Academy banquets, which are to be judged in
precisely the same way. They are parts of his
presidential art, and they were looked upon as
models of the stately after-dinner oratory. To
use a cant phrase, it was his business to rise to
the occasion. He had almost invariably ‘‘ the
heir to the Throne at the board with other mem-
bers of the Royal Family,” and all around him
were the greatest statesmen, soldiers, churchmen,
writers, and thinkers of the time. It was a great
audience, the greatest ever gathered on any par-
ticular occasion at any festive board in England,
It represented the topmost peak of the summit of
our national life. It was his aim to bring an ever
fresh interest to the treatment of the themes which
the occasion presented to him. He had to be

150 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

fresh and varied on such subjects as the ‘‘ Royal
Family,” the ‘‘Commander-in-Chief,” the ‘Army,
Navy, and Volunteers,” the ‘‘judical system,”
and, in short, once more to drop into the familiar,
any good thing that was going. If he was
inclined to speak of the royal guests as of people
of another sphere, of the Army and Navy as of
forces unequalled in strength, holding 300,000,000
human beings inviolable, he must be judged by
the difficulties of his task, and the number of
times that in his long career that task was pre-
sented to him, and that he had to perform it each
time with as much freshness and originality as
though it had been the first.

CHAPTER XIV
SOME LETTERS AND THE END

His house, and whom he entertained there—His musical ‘‘ At
Homes ”—Letter to Mrs. Matthews—Love of solitude—
Letter to Mrs. Matthews from Braemar—Holiday spirit and
Italy—Letter to Mrs. Russell Barrington about the Kyrle
Society—Another letter tothe same friend, onrefusing to speak
in public—First attack of the heart—Increase of symptoms
—Enrolled in the peerage—-Bronchial attack—The end—
Funeral at St. Paul’s— Monument by Brock—Sir E.
Poynter’s speech at the University— King’s tribute to Leigh-
ton at the banquet of the R.A. 1897.

ie us resume the story of his life. He
moved into the beautiful house built for
him by Mr. Aitchison in 1866. It was a house
that was a perfect expression of himself, ‘‘ that
was Leighton,” a Royal Academician said to me.
We shall describe it later. In it he passed the
remaining years of his life, years of honour and of
work, sweetened by the love of friends, enriched
by the admiration of all lovers of art. There he
entertained with that fine sense of the fitness of
things which marked all he did. There royalty
visited him. Our King, then Prince of Wales,
delighted to show honour to the man whom he
had known since he was a boy. The present
Queen found charm in his work, and had a great
regard for him personally. She worked for him

152 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

with her own hands a chair, of which the em-
broideries are interesting in design and execution,
as well as for the condescending kindness which
they display. Here too he received distinguished
foreigners. He gave formal and informal dinner-
parties to the Royal Academicians. It was his
wont to sit a little higher than his guests, on a
seat from which he could dominate the table.
Here too he entertained his more intimate friends,
who will ever carry away inexhaustible memories
of his delightful talk—talk that ranked him among
the best conversationalists of the time. Mr. Val
Prinsep, Mr. Watts, Mr. Pepys Cockerell, and
many others were to be met there. And here,
too, in the great studio in the spring, after the
toil and stress of painting his year’s pictures for
the Royal Academy were over, he gathered together
a privileged number of his friends at a musical
reception at which some of the greatest musicians
of the day were to be heard. Writing to his
sister Mrs. Matthews, April, 1871, he says :—
‘Dearest Gussy,— You heard, no doubt,
that I gave a party the other day, and that it
went off well. To me perhaps the most striking
thing of the evening was Joachim’s playing of
Bach’s ‘Chacone’ up in my gallery. I was at
the other end of the room, and the effect from
the distance of the dark figure in the uncertain
light up there, and barely relieved from the gold
background and dark recess, struck me as one
of the most poetic and fascinating things that I
remember. At the opposite end of the room in
the apse was a blazing crimson rhododendron

-FINISHED STUDY FOR DRAPERY OF DEMETER
FROM ‘THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE”

SOME LETTERS AND THE END 153

tree, which looked glorious where it reached up
into the golden semi-dome. Madame Viardot
sang the ‘ Divinités du Styx’ from the Alcestzs
quite magnificently, and then, later in the even-
ing, a composition of her own in which I delight
——a Spanish-Arab ditty, with a sort of intermit-
tent mandoline scraping accompaniment. It is
the complaint of some forsaken woman, and
wanders and quavers in a doleful sort of way
that calls up to me in a startling manner visions
and memories of Cadiz and Cordova, and sunny
distant lands that smell of jasmine. A little Miss
Brandes, a pupil of Madame Schumann, played
too. She is full of talent and promise, and has
had an immense success. Mme. Joachim sang
‘Mignon’ (Beethoven) excellently.”

When the brilliancy and the dazzle of the
} London season were over—the soirée of the
» Royal Academy usually marked its close — he
would set off for his wanderings in the fair and
beloved lands that stirred his imagination and
gave rest to his spirit. Solitude was the boon
‘he sought after the distraction of London. He
would renew therein the inspiration that eluded
him in the crowded haunts of his ordinary life.
He would go forth as a lover to meet his mis-
tress. She came to him in the beauty of sun
and moonlight, by lonely heaths and populated
places, in out-of-the-way corners where the simple
folk charmed him and sat for him, in classic
groves where the landscape held inestimable
memories of the past; and always he would
bring home collections of sketches, some of

154 FREDERIC LEIGHTON
which adorn the walls of the house he loved

and lived in. ‘‘I am enjoying unsociable solitude
keenly, bear that I am,” he writes to a friend
from Ireland. In another letter he says: ‘‘ Kind

people ask me to stay in country houses and hear
the nightingales. Imagine going to a country
house full of acquaintances to listen to the
nightingales.” In bygone days he used to go
quietly to Hampstead Heath and spend the night
in the little inn to hear the music of the bird
whose cadences had intoxicated Keats as they
intoxicated him.

To Mrs. Matthews he wrote from Braemar,
September roth, 1886, and his letter gives a
charming glimpse of his wanderings and also of
the simple ways of royal folk :—

‘‘T have had, with few exceptions, very brilliant
days for my journey—days, however, which seem
to have come to an end. Yesterday the country
was parched (for Scotland, bzen entendu), the
river Dee white and apologetic, dribbled in shal-
low sheets through innumerable naked stones ;
this morning the dust of yesterday is mud, the
trees are drunk, and the Dee, dvown again from
the peat moors, bounces along, as beseems it
‘allegro con brio.’ In my last I left myself
starting on a driving tour of six days, thro’ the
north and west of Sutherlandshire. It wasa great
success. I had fortunately formed no definite
ideas in regard to it. The varied scenery, now
very wild and waste, now rich and exuberant,
constantly enhanced in depth of tone by the con-
trast of the indigo or the azure of sea or loch or

SOME LETTERS AND THE END 155

winding burn, was a constantly renewed delight
to me, marred only, if at all, by an almost too
rapid shifting and succession of wonderful picture
after picture. Then, oh! supreme charm, beyond
a handful of anglers in the excellent little inns, so

clean and inviting, not a fourtst; ’Arry is ’olely

wanting—tho’ not missed. Of Braemar I have
nothing new to say, except that I am already
booked for a dinner! (Borthwick’s). Yesterday I
drove over to Abergeldie, a charming, primitive,
quite tiny-like old Scotch chateau, with a garden
containing nothing but the o/d flowers—it is quite
lovely. How primitive the arrangements are (the
more striking because the place is occupied by
Royalty) you will gather from the fact that when
I rang at the front door I saw thro’ a side
window lunch going on, not a yard off, in what
was, in fact, also the front hall. Fortunately a
footman came round to lead me to a side door,
in the vicinity of the pantry, where I inscribed my
name with some difficulty in a surrounding of
sauceboats and broken meat. Meantime the
Princess had spied me, and came out into the
garden tosee me. She was charming, as always,
and offered me lunch, but I was-shy at my
intrusion and bolted.”

Signor Costa, who, as I have said, was his
constant companion in Italy, gives us a pleasant
account of the boyishness of his spirits during
holiday time. ‘‘On one occasion,” he tells us,
‘fat Spoleto in the Duomo, where he had gone to
look at the paintings of Filippino Lippi, seeing
the two pulpits which are outside the church, he

156 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

mounted into one of them and began a sermon
upon the way to understand art, caricaturing a
modern art critic of Perugia. ‘Art,’ he was say-
ing, ‘is a sentiment, an idea, a revelation. . .’
But at this moment there appeared the Bishop
himself walking between two stout priests,
and Frederic disappeared into the pulpit stair.
He did not reappear till the Bishop had slowly
passed, holding a solemn discussion with his two
companions.”

His love of truth, marked in him as was his
love of beauty, is well shown in a letter he
wrote to his friend, Mrs: Russell Barrington.
It treats of a subject dear to both, and it illus-
trates Leighton’s ever-living faith in the influence
of good art for the ennobling of life. Both he and
his correspondent laboured with zeal to diffuse the
love of beauty amongst those inhabiting the
poorest neighbourhoods of London. The Kyrle
Society, whose sole object is to make more lovely
sordid lives, by giving to the poor concerts of
good music, by decorating their clubs and meeting-
places with pictures, by giving them fresh air to
breathe and open spaces, had taken up Mr. Watts’s
idea of keeping the memory of heroic deeds ever
present to the mind of the nation. Leighton,
while encouraging this idea, was still eager to
show that if great art elevates, poor art degrades
the spirit, or to say the least, leaves it cold and
inert. The letter is one of many that he wrote to
Mrs. Barrington on the nature of the work she,
in concert with the Kyrle Society, was doing. It
upholds the gospel of the sacredness of art which

ti Ni , ‘ , \ i

DESIGN IN OILS, ‘‘ST, GEORGE AND THE DRAGON”
BELOW THREE ALLEGORICAL FIGURES

SOME LETTERS AND THE END 157

requires nothing less than the devotion of a life-
time. Trained faculty is as necessary to it as is
native genius. To portray a scene, to nobly plan
it, and nobly to execute it, in all its parts, requires
something more than the cheap efforts of en-
thusiastic amateurs.

‘* LEIGHTON HOUSE,
“°3, HOLLAND PARK ROAD, W.
“* September, 1887.

*“‘Dear Mrs. Barrington,—Forgive my delay
in answering you; I have been much harassed
this morning in various ways. The subject of
- Signor’s letter,* and of your article, is one of the
greatest interest ; that I sympathise warmly with
the thought of keeping the memory of heroic
deeds alive in our people, I need hardly say; that
I wish to see the love and understanding of good
art spread amongst the masses, is a matter of
course. The difficulty lies in the combination of
the two objects which are quite independent of
one another though not necessarily antagonistic.
As I ventured to say at a meeting some years ago,T
I have a great dread of the multiplication of
rubbish which is so often the outcome of the
efforts of zealous persons who have not know-
ledge. I think that the wrzé7ng in letters, say
of gold, and ferhafs with some adornment
(but even here danger creeps in) of the un-

* Referring to a letter from Mr. G, F. Watts, R.A., to
the 7imes on the subject of keeping the heroic deeds of the
poor ever present in the mind of the nation.

+ The meeting held in Kensington Town Hall for the
Kyrle Society.

158 FREDERIC LEIGHTON -

amplified account of a simple great deed, would
be a better way of propagating its influence than
presenting it on the same wall in a bad artistic
form, and bad that form would be in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred. For artistic training
copies of existing excellent work would be more
valuable, up to a certain point; that is they would
train the perception of the quite ignorant (but
receptive) spectator in regard to certain general
attributes of good art; but there never was a
copy by the most skilled hand in which the real
presence of the original had not evaporated in the
attempt to transmit it; what shall we say of such
copies as local talent in average—or even in ex-
ceptional painters—would furnish ?

““As regards the People’s Palace, which I
mean, when I find leisure, to go and see, it seems
probable that it would furnish an admirable field
for decorative painting, I mean decoration by
painting. I shall be ve~y much interested to hear
what practical scheme the Kyrle Society has to
suggest. You will have to consider (supposing
first you are able to command the hands and
brains needed) how far the idea of purely and
directly didactic painting such as is proposed by
Watts is compatible with the adornment of the
spaces, with a view to training the eye of the
people to a sense of deauty. You will have also
to bear in mind the conditions of our Art. Take
for instance the paragraph you quote about Alice
Ayres, a narrative of the most stirring and im-
pressive purport—worthy to be written, as I
suggested before, in letters of gold, and that on

SOME LETTERS AND THE END 159

every school wall—but a moment’s consideration
will show you that its impressiveness depends
wholly on the successions of the dramatic move-
ments and their connection.

“Her refusal to save herself—the successive
journeys backward and forward—the spirit of
self-sacrifice sustaining her throughout, ‘haz is
the subject, and it is not a subject expressible in
Art which requires one poignant moment. No
one moment out of that short drama could convey
its meaning or its greatness. You may paint a
picture (perhaps) of one moment in that drama,
but you could not in a picture even hint at what

-makes it sublime ;—but I must bring this long

rigmarole to a close. I need not assure you that
I am not seeking to throw cold water, or to be
what is called ‘a wet blanket,’ but merely to
remind you of the complexity of the problem you
have before you.”

Another letter to this friend is worth quoting.
She had asked him to speak at a meeting on a
subject sympathetic to him. He writes :—

‘ EXETER,
“* May 12th, 1888.

‘Dear Mrs. Barrington, —It was quite im-
possible for me to answer your letter before
leaving town, but as you are anxious for a speedy
reply, and altho’ I have even here a considerable
budget of letters with me, I will not await my
return to give you my answer. Let me say at
once that I very much appreciate the devotion
with which you and those with whom you work

160 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

are addressing yourselves to a task inspired by
high and worthy motives—motives which have
my whole sympathy, and subject to certain limita-
tions and misgivings into which I need not enter,
a sympathy extending to your present practical
action as well as to the motives. As concerns
my own intervention in the matter of which you
speak, you know the bar which stands in my
way, and which is insuperable, I regret to say.
The reasons which have now for a good many
years impelled me to decline any ‘public utter-
ances’ outside Burlington House have increased
in weight and force as life and strength wanes,
and as the demands on me grow in every direc-
tion. Iam sometimes asked to speak in public,
not only in London, but all over the country, and
in all cases the demand is grounded on strong
claims in so far as I am an ‘official’ artist.
Assent once is assent always—assent in half the
cases would mean the gravest injury to my work,
and I am a workman first and an official after-
wards. Things have their humorous side, for
those who press me most are sometimes those
who on other occasions most earnestly assure me
that I ‘do too much,’ How tired I am of hearing
it. I cannot but refuse. Let me add that the
only infraction of this rule never since broken
thro’, that I remember, was that little speech for
the Kyrle Society !

‘‘Meanwhile one infraction which can form no
precedent, and is only accepted by me, as likely
to be, Z hope (?), of some use in this country in
a general way, and not in reference to any one

SOME LETTERS AND THE END 161

scheme in particular, will, I think, act also in
your favour. I have accepted the Presidency for
this year for the first of a series of ‘Art Con-
gresses’ (or some such barbarous name), which
means that I shall deliver a presidential address,
‘intended to be of an artistically provocative
character, at the first gathering of the said
congress this year in Liverpool. But I have
already gone beyond the margin of my time, so
I must close in haste, and with much regret that I
cannot do the thing that you wish,
‘* Remain,
‘* Yours sincerely,
‘* FRED. LEIGHTON.”’

The years wore on, with their burden of work
accomplished, of recreations enjoyed. His level
of health was never a high one, but his abundant
vitality kept the thought of death dissociated
from him. ‘‘I try a new physic every day,” he
wrote to Mrs. Matthews as early as 1872. ‘‘I
should like to try getting ten or twelve years
younger.” To a friend he said, ‘‘I pray God I
may die before I am seventy,” for to him no
thought was so bitter as that of surviving his
mental powers.

The fatal cloud gathered suddenly. He was
walking down St. James’s Street, Piccadilly, to-
wards the Athenzeum Club when the first spasm of
the heart attacked him. He had been to a Satur-
day afternoon concert, and had just strength to
crawl in and throw himself on a sofa, waiting
for the agony to pass. This happened in the

M

162 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

early days of the winter of 1895. From that
day until the end the attacks grew upon him; he
consulted physicians, but all in vain. He worked
as of yore, but he often worked in grievous pain.
Still the ever-recurring anguish did not cloud the
brightness of his manner or lessen the ardour of
his spirit.

‘“‘T am no better, rather worse,” he answered
to a friend’s anxious inquiries. He spent, as
usual, part of his summer in Italy. The last
study from nature was painted in Rome in
October, 1895. It was a study of fruit for his
picture of Clytie. He had arranged it on a
marble sarcophagus in the courtyard of the
Palazzo Odeschalchi, and he enjoyed working on
it for several hours, although often interrupted by
the torture of that heart spasm. He went to
Siena, Florence, and Venice, where he saw for the
last time the masterpieces he had loved so well.
From Venice he wrote to Mrs. Russell Barrington
in relation to some tickets for the Purcell lectures.
‘*T do not know how they will work in with my
engagements, but anyhow I am glad to support
them in deference to a great name.” And then
came the sinister words, ‘‘I am no better.”

He set to work on his return on his ‘‘ Clytie,”
the piéture where he told of his own aspiring love
for light and beauty, as he had told it in the first
picture he ever painted, that of the boy Giotto
in the fields sehnsucht for art. Friends remember
how earnestly and hopefully he talked. ‘‘I have
never had a better appetite for work; nor done
better work,” he said.

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New Year’s morning came with the announce-
‘ment of the honours granted, and his name was
found enrolled in the peerage. Letters and tele-
grams of congratulation poured in all day upon
him. He attended to them all.

On January 22nd he felt better of a bad
bronchial cold which he had caught. That
evening after dinner he wrote to Mrs. Barring-
ton to exchange the tickets she had sent him
for better ones, as he meant himself to go to
the lectures in aid of Mrs. Watts-Hughes’ in-
stitution. ‘‘Since you are good enough to offer
to change the tickets for tenners, I will ask you
to do so, and thank you in advance. Yes,
McKail’s book, which oddly enough I have read—
for alas! I never read now—is an exquisite bit of
work.” This was the last letter he ever wrote.
He drew—the last sketches he ever made. They
were for the figures supporting his coat-of-arms,
illustrating his double artistic profession. In the
afternoon he wished for air, and although it was
a miserably damp day, he drove to Westminster,
and stood about watching some old houses being
taken down. The next morning he woke in pain.
It was five o’clock. He sat up on the side of his
bed in his death struggle. The instinct of kind-
ness was strong in him still. His devoted servant
was in delicate health, and for two hours he re-
mained in silent agony before he rang his bell.
The doctor gave up hope, but Leighton would not
allow his sisters to be called. ‘‘ Why send for
them?” he said. ‘‘They are more ill than I
am.”

164 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

Towards 5.30 they were sent for, and they
did not leave him until he passed away on
Saturday, 25th January. In the intervals of his
paroxysms of pain he spoke to them continually,
confiding to them the various arrangements he
wished to make. Amongst his most important
bequests was £10,000 to the Royal Academy, and
his last audible words were those that left his
love to the body whose interests he had served
with unflagging loyalty. He made his will but a
few hours before his death. He had not done so
before, believing that all his property would go
unquestionably to his sisters as next-of-kin. He
made them his absolute heirs and sole executors.
Thus ended a life of marvellous activity, of
singular unity of purpose, sustained, if also
sometimes perplexed, by a most rare combination
of intellectual and artistic power.

The letters patent that made him Baron Leigh-
ton of Stretton were dated the day before his
death. He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral
with great pomp. His coffin, covered with a pall
of crimson and gold, was borne by painters,
sculptors, by men illustrious in science and letters.
It bore his name and the list of honours bestowed
upon him by his Sovereign and by foreign
societies. It was followed by representatives of
royalty, of princes, and of the various bodies con-
nected with art in England, and by a deputation
of the students of the Royal Academy, carry-
ing a crown, The Cathedral was packed with
friends and with those who did not know him per-
sonally, but who revered and admired him. The

SOME LETTERS AND THE END 165

line of the procession inside the church and up
the flight of steps outside was lined with 450 of
the Artists’ Corps of Volunteers, of whom fifty
had preceded the cortege. Everything proclaimed
the greatness of the man who had gone and the
void that his loss would make in the world of art
as of letters, and in the world of society. The
music that was played was some of his own
favourite pieces. Chopin’s Funeral March rang
out as the procession passed in under the dome,
the sound of silver trumpets rising clear above
the clash of the other instruments. Sir John
Millais, already under the shadow of death,
deposited the laurel wreath of the Academy to
its departed President.

He was buried in the crypt. A monument has
been erected in the body of the cathedral. His
recumbent figure in bronze, by Brock, is placed
not far from that of Gordon, our soldier-saint.
He lies in his Peer’s robes. The chain of the
President, to which is attached the medal of the
Academy, is round his neck ; Painting and Sculp-
ture kneel at his head and at his feet. His
beautiful face is worn with pain, and the head
droops languidly on the pillow. It is an admirable
likeness. If Leighton’s friends would have wished
to see him as he was in the days when work, and
the joy of life, and the beauty thereof lent their
glow to his features, it may be as well for them
to think of him sleeping the sleep of death until
the beauty that he dreamt of shall come, and
remove all trace of languor and of suffering from
his countenance.

166 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

The King—then Prince of Wales—placed him-
self at the head of the committee for collecting the
funds necessary for the erection of this memorial.
Sir Edward Poynter spoke at the unveiling of it
on February 21st, 1902. Ina long and eloquent
speech he traced the career and character of the
painter whom he had first known at Rome, when
he was beginning that picture of ‘‘ Cimabue,” by
which he sprang at once into fame.

‘‘If he was successful in raising the Royal
Academy to a higher place in the estimation of
the public than it had ever occupied, it was be-
cause in his mind the interests of the Academy
and the interests of the highest art were identical,
and because he illustrated this view in his own
person by his devoted and noble example, and by
his exalted aims in the practice of his own art.”

The King, on May ist, 1897, at the Royal
Academy banquet, the first that took place after
Lord Leighton’s death, spoke his tribute to the
dead President :—

‘‘It is unnecessary, as it would be almost im-
pertinent in me, to hold forth in praise of the
merits and virtues of Lord Leighton. They are
known to you all. He has left a great name
behind him, and he himself will be regretted not
only by the artistic world, but by the whole
nation. I myself had the advantage of knowing
him for a great number of years—ever since |
was a boy—and I need hardly say how deeply
I deplore the fact that he can be no more in
our midst. But his name will be cherished and
honoured throughout the country.”

CHAPTER XV
LEIGHTON HOUSE

House the expression of his personality—Beauty of the mould-
ings—Priceless tiles collected by Leighton—Windows from
Damascus—The studio—The Arab Hall—Inscription in
Arabic—Enriched with evidence of magnificent taste—-The
various reception-rooms—His unpretentious bedroom—The
house on reception days—During the week of memory—
To-day. ;

Agee expression of a man’s personality is to
be found in his surroundings, and the house
he built, decorated, and never ceased to love
cannot fail to represent Leighton on his purely
artistic side. It is a house of dreams and memo-
ries made real in stone and priceless tiles, in
bits of unique furniture, and curious trophies.
During his lifetime pictures by old masters and
by contemporary artists hung on its walls;
statues, faiénce, metal- work, objects of vertu
were everywhere. The house was built from
designs suggested by him, and splendidly carried
out by his old friend Mr. Aitchison, R.A. It con-
tinued to be his home from 1866 to the hour of
his death. ‘‘I live in a mews,” Leighton used to
say, for Holland Park Road, where his studio
stands, was at the time of his coming to reside
there a road of small, irregular houses, of obscure

167

168 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

shops, and stables. Of late years, however,
there have risen among these modest building's
stately structures, the homes of artists, clustering
round that of their President.

Leighton House, to look at from the outside,
is a substantial brick building, with nothing to
indicate the splendour within. A thick screen of
plane trees in the front ; behind it is a garden so
skilfully planted that it looks much larger than
it is, and which holds memories of summer Sun-
day mornings when Leighton would relax from
duty and sit chatting in the pleasant sunshine with
some of his most intimate friends, delighting
them by the charm of his unrivalled conversation.
The architecture is very simple in lines, but it
has much beauty of stone and wood work. Mr.
Aitchison understands, as very few architects do
in England, the requisite depth of mouldings to
produce variety in the play of light and shade,
and the mouldings that adorn Leighton House
are among the finest in England. The Arab
Hall, which is of a far later date than the house,
stands at the west end.

‘*Leighton had been collecting tiles for years,”
said Mr. Aitchison, ‘‘Chaldean tiles, tiles of
Damascus, tiles from Crete, of wonderful colour
and some of wonderful design.” They used to
stand in the big studio, and it must be admitted
were seriously in the way. One day he said, ‘‘I
must really do something with these tiles,” and
Mr. Aitchison undertook to furnish him with a
design that would be suited to their employment.
‘*There were the red tiles, the blue ones, the

-ADY

ENETIAN I

APY:

LEIGHTON HOUSE 169

incomparable purple tiles, in which the colour is
under the glaze. When the Arab Hall was
decided upon, it was found that there were not
enough, many more had to be bought. Then
came the question of the windows. Five were
necessary. Leighton went purposely to Damascus
to choose his windows, and ordered them home.
The untutored Arabs, who knew nothing about
packing, shoved the windows into ordinary cases,
and so they came. When they reached they
were simply a chaos of fragments ; one, however,
had remained -comparatively intact. This was
put up at the further end, and the other windows
were designed, using it as a model.”

The plain, beautifully proportioned hall, the
nobly designed staircase of ebonised oak, that
begins in the shadow close to the dining-room,
goes up into the light and takes us right into the
splendid studio that occupies the whole of the
upper story, these are as they were at first. The
studio is a model of lighting; the big window that
exactly faces the door is flanked above by three
smaller windows, and at the end is a small door
leading into a dainty Venetian balcony with stone
parapet. Here were kept small models in plas-
ter, with arrangements of drapery for his more
important pictures, there studies of figures used to
be huddled together in the recess of the window.
On the walls close to the door ran aloft the
frieze of the Parthenon, below it were hung a
collection of studies made during his travels.
Beyond is a big glass studio built much later.
Passing out of the small hall below we enter a

170 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

large one, lit by a skylight, where enamels
shine brilliantly in the full light. The walls are
covered by dazzling blue and white tiles. Some
are copies made by Mr. de Morgan of the old
lustrous blue careen; peacock blue tiles cover
also the walls of the staircase up to the first land-
ing. From the hall we enter a twilight corridor,
the ceiling of it is silver, the moulding of it is
gold. Two red marble pillars stand at the gate
of the Arab Hall. This is the shrine of beauty
holding the secret of oriental mystery and peace.
Many -coloured marbles, alabaster, mother of
pearl, priceless Persian tiles—some of the tenth

century—unite to give to it a glisten and a glory. |

The black marble basin in the centre, from which
often rose a shaft of water, is an adaptation of
a well-known oriental fountain. In its depth

used to swim Japanese golden tench. All round ~

are recesses with cushioned divans, and small
tables inlaid with mother of pearl; and above
the entrance, in a procession of splendid letters,
runs the inscription, ‘‘In the name of the merci-
ful and long-suffering God. The merciful hath
taught the Koran. He hath created man and
taught him speech. He has set the sun and
moon in a certain course. Both the trees and
the grass are in subjection to him.” We are
in the East—gorgeous, mysterious, dimly lit,
woven with magical dreams. The scheme of
the colour throughout is peacock blue, touched
with red, picked out in gold and black and white.
The walls rise from the shadowy floor, and end in
the tinted gloom of a golden dome pierced by

oe

a dGANAdday ALIGONHdV AO ADGATd GAHL,,

LEIGHTON HOUSE 171

little windows of stained glass. The dome is sup-
ported by white columns, whose base is green,
whose capitols are carved by Mr. Boehm with
strange, rare birds, designed by Mr. Caldecott.
In the lower half of the north and south windows
are the screens of Cairo woodwork—the mushara-
biyehs—through which the light filters.

When the President was alive he enriched his
home with evidences of his gorgeous taste, every
corner was made more beautiful by some work
of art, some touch of quaintness and splendour.
In the hall stood a magnificent peacock, resum-
ing in its plumage all the splendour of blue
and green enamel and dim gold. It stood ona
chest cunningly wrought in mother-of-pearl and
curious carving. A statue, in bronze, of Icarus,
by Gilbert, occupied a place of honour. Great
vases of faience and of metal stood near. In the
twilight corridor and in the Arab Hall were
gathered all that pottery could bring of won-
drous colour, of prismatic hues, all that engraved
metal, silver and gold plaques, scimitars, weapons
could suggest of the past. Splendid stuffs, bro-
cades woven in looms of long ago, carpets of
mingled colouring, curious and splendid chests,
musical instruments, valuable books, were all here.
We went up the gleaming staircase where the
blue tiles shone; up to the first landing where
pictures were hanging. There was the portrait
of Captain Burton, that of Leighton by Watts,
a picture by Armstrong, a Reynolds, pictures by
Tintoretto, landscapes by Costa, some kneeling
white-capped women by Legros, and many

172 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

others. Below, in the dining-room, among tiles
and pots, were the Satsuma plate and sword pre-
sented to Leighton by the officers of the Artists’
Volunteers in 1878. In the drawing-room in the
ceiling of a recess, deeply bordered with gold,
was Delacroix’s study for a ceiling in the Palais
Royal. There were magnificent Corots—Sunrise,
Sunset, Noon and Night—great pictures broadly
painted, of more positive colouring than was
usual with the French artist. They fetched the
comparatively small price of 46,000 at his death;
they had belonged to Daubigny. There was
another Corot, a calm river scene with a boat
moored in the foreground, which was a great
favourite with Leighton. Its silvery grey peace
suited his mood. Then there was a picture by
George Mason, bought at Leighton’s sale by
Mr. Tate. It was a rustic scene, the first picture
that Mason painted in England during that
period of depression when Leighton came to him
and cheered him, gave him courage and hope.
It represents a girl with wind-tossed skirts feed-
ing geese, and surrounded by the green freshness
of the country. It hangs in the gallery which
Tate presented to the nation, beautiful as a work
of art, beautiful as a reminder of the human
history connected with it. There also were Con-
stables. Amongst others ‘‘The Hay Wain,” of
historic interest, a revelation of English art
to the French people, and ‘‘ Hampstead Heath,”
a sombre sketch under a mournful sky. There
was a superb picture by Daubigny. These are
but a few of the inestimable works that hung in

FIGURE HOLDING JAK ON KNEI’
TUDY FOR THE PICTURE OF CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE

fi

LEIGHTON HOUSE 173

that noble room. In the library was a large dark
picture of a Doge with an ermine tippet. In
the hall was a picture by Steinle, the master
that Leighton revered, the ‘‘ Fontana della
Tartarughe” in Rome. In a gallery built about
two years before Leighton’s death the pictures
were gathered that were given him by artists in
exchange for some of his works. From Millais a
pearly-toned girl shelling peas, Alma Tadema’s
**Corner of my Studio,” an exquisite gem in
painting by Legros, Burne-Jones’s ‘‘ Chaucer’s
Dream of Fair Women,” etc.

Close to the studio was his bedroom, an unpre-
tentious room, very simply furnished.

We must think of the house as it was on the gala
days of the musical receptions given every year by
the President. Then splendid carpets hung from
the gallery at one end of the studio, flowers of
perfect bloom brightened every corner. The pic-
tures of the year stood about on easels. Lovely
and charming women, men distinguished in every
walk of life, thronged the rooms. The host was
there, attentive to every want of his guests, and
the house was filled with the sounds of Joachim
and Piatti’s violins, with the accent of perfect
voices singing. It was a house built on a great
decorative scheme, a fitting background for a life
that was led on the finest conception of beauty.

The house is to be remembered as it was in
that week of sorrow when the President lay in
his coffin, in his stately workroom. About him
were gathered the pictures still unfinished, wait-
ing for the last touches that never would be given.

174 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

At the head of the coffin Clytie, with her arms
extended, worshipped the setting sun. Near
her was a life-sized bust of a lady of imperial
beauty in an eastern dress of rose-coloured tissue,
the masses of her dark brown hair flowing from
under a diadem. The pathetic figure of a woman
in an agony of sorrow looked up, keeping her
hands passionately closed. A half-length life-
sized figure of a Bacchante, adjusting a leopard
skin upon her naked shoulders, and lastly stood
an unfinished picture of a life-sized half-length
figure of a girl, her face framed in the heavy
masses of her auburn hair.

Then there is the house now deprived of its
treasures, but filled with other treasures as valu-
able and more appealing. The beautiful shell is
there-—the Arab Hall, its beauty undimmed,
albeit barren of much that was in it. The tiles
still gleam on the walls of the corridor and of
the staircase, and in the large studio, as in the
smaller rooms adjoining it, are gathered the
drawings made by the master, the drawings that
might be called the diary of the artist’s life.
Mrs. Sutherland Orr and Mrs. Matthews gave up
the ground lease—sixty-seven years—and offered
the house as it then stood to the nation. It is
useless for us here to enter into all the vicissitudes
that followed this cession. A committee, of which
Leighton’s friend Mrs. Russell Barrington is
the secretary, has been formed, and she and
others have passionately devoted themselves to
the task of preserving this perfect example of
a house of which there has been none other

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LEIGHTON HOUSE 175

like it, built since the sixteenth century, and of
adorning its walls with Leighton’s sketches and
pictures. Generous donors have contributed to
the task of gathering these records of the un-
dying charm of line, of the exquisite charm of
detail lovingly wrought out. The King, then
Prince of Wales, gave one of the finest studies
in the collection, that of ‘‘Summer Slumbers.”

Other friends and admirers of Leighton’s genius
have come forward and added to the treasures
_ gathered in his house. Now, in the noble studio
where he worked, up the staircase, on the walls
of the rooms where he lived, hangs a collection
of unique sketches. There the student may
come to learn how a master saw Nature, how he
worked at her feet, how in all humility he sought
to reproduce the flowers of the field, the line of
mountains and clouds, the sweep of sea-coast or
of moorland ; how he studied interiors and ruined
places, how he studied the human figure un-
clothed or clothed in drapery, the lines of which
are harmonies to the eye, and how he built up his
pictures laboriously out of all these notes.

Thousands of visitors avail themselves yearly
of the privilege of studying these priceless draw-
ings, the house being open to the public every
weekday.

CHAPTER XVI
THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS

Ruskin’s criticism of the Cimabue picture—Dante G. Rossetti’s
letter to Mr. W. Allingham noticing the picture—The
Times, the Atheneum, the Spectator upon it — Reaction
shown in the criticisms of ‘‘ The Triumph of Music” —Fluc-
tuation of opinion—The execution ‘‘ too smooth”—‘‘ The
Daphnephoria” hailed as a great work—‘“‘ Captive Andro-
mache” culmination of his second period—‘‘Cymon and
Iphigenia” greatly praised—M. de la Sizeranne on Leigh-
ton—Mr. Richard Mutter on his art—The Z¢mes on Leigh-
ton’s sketches—Sir William Richmond on Leighton’s art.

HAVE often referred to the criticisms of the

Press, and to the verdict of some of the
higher judges of art upon Leighton’s works
during the course of my narrative. I shall here
cull from some of the more important of these
utterances for the benefit of my readers. The
Cimabue picture elicited perhaps the most uni-
versal acknowledgment of Leighton’s powers
and of his promise. Mr. Ruskin, in his (Votes on
Some of the Princtpal Pictures Exhibited tn the
Rooms of the Royal Academy, devoted some pages
to the appreciation of this picture.

‘‘This is a very important and very beautiful
picture. It has both sincerity and grace, and is
painted on the purest principles of Venetian art—

176

THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS 177

that is to say, on the calm acceptance of the
whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place,
deserving of faithful rendering. The great secret
of the Venetians was their simplicity. They were
great colourists, not because they had peculiar
secrets about oil and colour, but because when
they saw a thing red they painted it red, and
when they saw it distinctly they painted it dis-
tinctly. In all Paul Veronese’s pictures the
lace borders of the tablecloths or fringes of the
dresses are painted with just as much care as
the faces of the principal figures, and the reader
may rest assured that in all great art it is so.
Everything in it is done as well as it can be done.
Thus in the picture before us, in the background
is the Church of San Miniato, strictly accurate in
every detail; on the top of the wall are oleanders
and pinks, as carefully painted as the church ;
the architecture of the shrine on the wall is well
studied from thirteenth-century Gothic, and
painted with as much care as the pinks; the
dresses of the figures, very beautifully designed,
are painted with as much care as the faces: that
is to say, all things throughout with as much
care as the painter could bestow. It necessarily
follows that what is most difficult (z.e. the faces)
should be comparatively the worst done. But if
they are done as well as the painter could do
them, it is all we have to ask; the modern artists
are under a wonderful mistake in thinking that
when they have painted faces ill they make their
pictures more valuable by painting the dresses
worse.
N

I 78 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

‘‘The painting before us has been objected to
because it seems broken up in bits. Precisely the
same objection would hold, and in very nearly the
same degree, against the best works of the
Venetians. All faithful colourists’ work in figure-
painting has a look of sharp separation between
part and part. Although, however, in common
with all other works of its class, it is marked
by these sharp divisions, there is no confusion in
its arrangement. The principal figure is nobly
principal, not by extraordinary light, but by its
own pure whiteness; and both the Master and the
young Giotto attract full regard by distinction of
form and face. The features of the boy are care-
fully studied, and are indeed what, from the
existing portraits of him, we know those of
Giotto must have been in his youth. The head
of the young girl who wears the garland of blue
flowers is also very sweetly conceived.

‘*Such are the chief merits of the picture. Its
defect is that the equal care given to the whole is
not yet care enough. 1am aware of no instance
of a young painter, who was really to be great,
who did not in his youth paint with intense effort
and delicacy of finish. The handling here is much
too broad; and the faces are, in many instances,
out of drawing and very opaque and feeble in
colour. Nor have they in general the dignity
of the countenance of the thirteenth century.
The Dante especially is ill-conceived—far too
haughty, and in no wise noble or thoughtful. It
seems to me probable that Mr. Leighton has
greatness in him, but there is no absolute proof

THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS 179

of it in this picture; and if he does not, in
succeeding years, paint far better, he will soon
lose the power of painting so well.”

This incomparable art critic’s judgment of
-Leighton’s further work we have noticed in the
body of our narrative.

Dante G. Rossetti, writing to William Allingham,
May 11th, 1855, notices the picture :—

‘‘In the Academy there is a big picture of
‘Cimabue,’ one of his works carried in pro-
cession, by a new man, living abroad, named
Leighton—a huge thing, which the Queen has
bought, which everyone talks of. The R.A.’s
have been gasping for years for someone to back
against Hunt and Millais, and here they have
him; a fact which makes some people do the
picture injustice in return. It was very interesting
to me at first sight; but on looking more at it,
I think there is great richness of arrangement—
a quality which, when veal/y existing, as it does
in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in
no living man—at any rate English—ranks among
the great qualities.

** But I am not quite sure yet either of this or
of the faculty for colour, which I suspect exists
very strongly, but is certainly at present under a
thick veil of paint; owing, I fancy, to too much
Continental study. One undoubted excellence it
has—facility without much neatness or ultra-
cleverness in the execution, which is greatly like
that of Paul Veronese; and the colour may
mature in future works to the same resemblance,
I fancy. There is much feeling for beauty, too,

180 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

in the women. As for purely intellectual qualities,
expression, intention, etc., there is little, as yet,
of them; but I think that in art richness of
arrangement is so nearly allied to these that
where it exists (in an earnest man) they will
probably supervene. However, the choice of the
subject, though interesting in a certain way,
leaves one quite in the dark as to what faculty
the man may have for representing incident or
passionate emotion. But I believe, as far as this
showing goes, that he possesses qualities which
the mass of our artists aim at chiefly, and only
seem to possess; whether he have those of which
neither they nor he give sign, I cannot yet tell ;
but he is said to be only twenty-four years old.
There is something very French in his work at
present, which is the most disagreeable thing
about it; but this I dare say would leave him if he
came to England.”

The Zzmes, in an exhaustive notice of the
exhibition of Leighton’s pictures in 1897, re-
ferring to this picture, speaks of the sensation
it produced: ‘‘. . . the science, the training of
it, showing the influence of elaborate studies. It
is interesting, now that the picture has been
brought out into the full light of day, to note in
the first place how fully this @uvre de jeunesse
possesses many of the best Leighton qualities ;
to notice again how the slight toning of the
varnish has mellowed and improved the colour,
and best of all, to see how well preserved it is.
Leighton never scamped his work, but what is
equally important, he was just as careful of his

THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS 181

materials as he was of his execution; his colours
do not fade, nor does his paint crack.

The Atheneum speaks of it ‘‘as a picture of
great power, although the composition is quaint
“even to sectarianism ; and though the touch, in
parts broad and masterly, is in the lesser parts of
the roughest character.” The Sectator notices
‘it as distinguished by ‘‘a broad, bold, and vivid
painter’s faculty. A larger style, a nobler and
more individual colour than enter into the
characteristics of the English art of our day.”
There is ‘‘ quite enough in the picture to make
Mr. Leighton’s appearance an event.”

This hearty recognition of the young man’s
high gift was reversed the following year, when
Leighton sent up ‘‘The Triumph of Music” for
exhibition. There was scarcely a dissentient
voice to the Atheneum’s pronouncement, ‘that
it was anything but a triumph of art.” The
criticisms from that time fluctuate. The artist’s
work is continually judged with reference to the
high promise held out by his first great picture,
and is at first found wanting. ‘‘The Star of
Bethlehem,” exhibited in the Royal Academy of
1862, won much praise however. The Atheneum
considered it ‘impressive and original.”

Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in 1863, spoke of» the
artist’s conception of girls as belonging to a
class of art ‘‘of luxurious exquisiteness ; beauty
for beauty’s sake; colour, light, form, choice
details for their own sake, or for beauty.” A
sentiment that is echoed long years after by Mr.
Spielmann in the Avé Journal, 1895, who notices

182 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

that ‘‘his art exists to create beautiful images.
There is nothing mystic or didactic in it... .
The aim of his art is to cultivate a pure, un-
alloyed beauty.”

In 1863 Mr. Rossetti hailed Leighton as ‘‘ the
one British painter of special faculty, who has come
forward with the most decided novelty of aim.”
The smoothness of his execution and the method
of his flesh painting are very much debated as
the years go on. The Sfectator is continually
referring to his painting as ‘‘ beautiful waxwork.’
The Zzmes deplores the ‘‘ polishing and smooth-
ing down which have given a lifeless look to
many of the pictures painted in his last period.”
Even the Atheneum, so loyal to him, complains
‘‘that the execution is a little too smooth.”
Still, in recognising the beauty, high aim, ideal
harmony of colour, the writers are unanimous.

We cannot follow the history of the criticism
of his work in detail; we shall follow it in re-
lation to some of his larger pictures.

When the ‘‘ Daphnephoria” was exhibited in
1876, twenty-two years after the ‘‘Cimabue,” it
was hailed unanimously as a great work. The
Atheneum spoke of it as possessing ‘‘ grace, and
a sumptuous sense of colour; and a somewhat
voluptuous beauty abound here,” and takes leave
‘fof a noble picture, with all thanks for it.”
The Art Journal speaks with enthusiasm: ‘‘To
project such a scene upon canvas presupposes a
man of high poetic imagination, and when it is
accompanied by such delicacy and yet such
precision of drawing, and such sincerity of

THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS 183

modelling, the poet is merged in the painter,
and we speak of such a one as a master.” The
Spectator calls it ‘‘decorative art,” but it says,
**that regarded as such, it will rank among the
artist’s most important works.” Mr. Holman
Hunt lavished upon the picture the most enthusi-
astic praise. It was ‘‘ the finest, the most beauti-
ful picture in the world.” The Zimes acknowledged
“a very genuine delight in the dignity of the
leading figure, in the grace of most—not all—of
the girls and children who follow after, in the
olives and in the distant landscape.”

Twelve years later came the ‘‘ Captive Andro-
mache,” and here the second period of the
painter’s art had reached its culminating point.
There were some who regarded the picture as Hol-
man Hunt regarded the ‘‘Daphnephoria.” ‘‘They
exhausted epithets,” says the Zzmes, in 1897, ‘‘to
describe its nobility, its realisation of all the
highest ideals of art. We regret that we cannot
wholly agree with these advocates, finding as
we do in a ‘set piece’ like this—and the same
may perhaps be said of the ‘Alcestis’ in the
first room—more form than feeling, more elegance
than emotion.” The Atheneum says that the
President’s ‘‘learning, care, grace, and cultured
sympathies are all displayed in this picture,” and
yet ‘‘the work reminds us less of actual life than
of an elaborate Greek bas-relief.” The Spectator
notices it as ‘‘academic, refined, unemotional,
well drawn, carefully designed, elaborately

Pxecuted.”
Four years before he had exhibited his ‘‘Cymon

184 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

and Iphigenia,” which had won still greater
praise, yet perceptible in the laudation is a warning
note of ‘‘ want of nature.” The Sfectator speaks
of it as ‘‘not nature. We cannot imagine that
under any circumstances it could be natural ; but
as a decorative composition of beautiful lines and
forms, delicate modelling, and softest contrasts
of glow and shadow, the picture is very fine
and very beautiful. We can imagine no wall
space which would not be made fairer for having
such a panel upon it, and the artist himself would
prabably be the last to claim for his work any other
office.”’

This therefore is the trend of English criticism
on his painting. Let us turn to the Continental
appreciation of his work. M. de la Sizeranne, in
his volume on La Petnture Anglaise Contemporatine,
thus sums up his opinion of Leighton’s art:— —

‘In his great portrait of himself in the Uffizi
Palace at Florence, his splendid head, with the
sumptuous red cloak with the golden chain of the
President, detaches itself against the background
of the bas-relief of the Parthenon. This is
symbolic of English painting. We always see
vaguely passing the riders of Phidias.

‘*Leighton’s composition is still marked by the
German school of Steinle, in which he learned
his artistic trade, after having learnt to paint at
Florence. In all his work you never find a base
idea or a sensual one. You will always find a study
of attitude and of gesture. His style is more sober
than that of Overbeck, more virile than that of
Bouguereau. The greatness of human com-

THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS 185

munion, the nobility of peace, these are the
themes that have oftenest and best inspired
Leighton. They are not found in France or else-
where. They are English ideas. He is always
painting the moment when the hearts of the
people beat in unison—‘‘ The Madonna of Cima-
bue carried in triumph through the streets of
Florence,” or the ‘‘ Daphnephoria.”

In Germany Richard Mutter, in his Azstory of
Modern Painting, takes this view of Leighton’s
work. ‘‘One stands before his works with a
certain feeling of indifference. There are few
artists who have so little temperament as Lord
Leighton, few in the same degree are wanting
in the magic of individuality. The present
academical art, as the phrase is understood of
Ingres, together with academical severity of
form, is united with a feeling recalling Hofmann
of Dresden; and the result is a placid classicality
adopted ad usum Delphint, a classicality foregoing
the applause of artists, but all the more in
accordance with the taste of a refined circle
of ladies.~ His chief works, ‘The Star of
Bethlehem,’ ‘ Orpheus and Eurydice,’ ‘Jonathan’s
Token to David,’ ‘Electra at the Tomb of
Agamemnon,’ the ‘Daphnephoria,’ ‘Venus dis-
robing for the Bath,’ and the like, are amongst
the most refined, although the most frigid crea-
tions of contemporary English art.” Of the
‘‘Captive Andromache,” he says: ‘‘In its dignity
of style, the noble composition and purity of the
lines which circumscribe the forms with so much
distinction and in so impersonal a manner, the

186 FREDERIC LEIGHTON

picture is an arid work, cold as marble and smooth
as porcelain. ‘Hercules wrestling with Death
for the body of Alcestis’ might be a Grecian
relief upon a sarcophagus, so carefully balanced
are the masses and the lines. The pose of
Alcestis is that of the nymphs of the Par-
thenon ; only it would not have been so fine were
not these in existence. His ‘Music Lesson,’ of
1877, is charming, and his ‘Elijah in the Wilder-
ness’ is a work of style. In his frescoes in the
South Kensington Museum there is a_ perfect
compendium of beautiful motives of gesture.
The eye delights to linger over the feminine
forms, half nude, half enclothed in drapery, yet
it notes too that these creations are composed out
of the painter’s knowledge and artistic reminis-
cences, there is a want of life in them because
the master has surrendered himself to feeling
with the organs of a dead Greek.”’

Of his sketches we have seen how high a value
Ruskin set upon ‘‘ The Lemon Tree” and ‘‘ The

Byzantium Well.” Speaking of the water-
colour room, where, in the retrospective exhibi-
tion of 1897, there were, the Zzmes says, ‘‘ as-

sembled a hundred water-colour drawings and
designs, together with about a dozen sketch
models, whether for the figures in Lord Leigh-
ton’s finished pictures or for his rare studies.
Better perhaps than anywhere else one can here
judge Leighton in two of his most characteristic
aspects—as a draughtsman and as a painstaking
searcher after perfection. Such studies as these
are almost unlike everything else that is done by

THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS. 187

artists at the present day. They carry us back
to an older system, an older practice ; and it may
be doubted whether any painter of the nineteenth
_ century, except Ingres, and possibly Lawrence,
| ever spent so much time and care upon what
_ would generally be called the preliminaries of his
work. Indeed, for anything strictly parallel to
these studies of Leighton’s one has to look back
to the great days of Florentine art, and to the
studies made by Raphael and Leonardo, and their
contemporaries and predecessors.”

Let us conclude these extracts by one more
taken from Lecture on Leighton, Millais, and
William Morris, by Sir William Blake Rich-
mond, K.C.B., R.A. :—

**You had presented to you” (in the exhibition
of 1897) ‘‘the growth and development of a mind
singularly alive at starting to the beauty of form,
sensitive to the language of line, highly apprecia-

-tive of harmony of quantities, and endowed with
a sense of colour, perhaps not so essentially
inherent as his delicately organised sense of form,
but cultivated to a point of excellence, it attained
in some instances results comparable with the
best. . . . Leighton’s art reflects himself, noble,
generous, and beautiful. He was endowed with
rare and various gifts, which he cultivated and
used by taking pains.”

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ARRANGED ACCORDING TO THEIR SUBJECTS

\ WITH DATE AND PLACE OF EXHIBITION

SIZE AND OWNER

J

The asterisk [*] denotes works exhibited at the Win e
of the Royal Academy of Arts, 1897.

R.A. is Royal Academy.
; G.G. Grosvenor Gallery. y »
- S.S. Royal Society of British Artists, Suffolk Str
D.G. Dudley Gallery. wee
S.P.P. Society of Portrait Painters.

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PRICES FETCHED FOR PICTURES BELONGING
TO LORD LEIGHTON

AT THE SALE AFTER HIS DEATH

The Hay Wain ae of the
locality)

The Shower

Morning, Evening, Noon and
Night (set of four)

A Lake Scene, with figure ane
boat: Evening :

_A Venetian Girl .
Shelling Peas

The Corner of the Studia
‘The Haystacks .

The Madonna and Child
Hephestus and Thetis .

A Féte Champétre in the
Gardens of an old Flemish
Chateau

Christ bearing His Gros

A Cassone Front, wood and
mountain landscape

Portrait of Paolo Paruta,
Italian historian

A Landscape, with ae aad
calves

A River Scene : ee

DRAWINGS—
A Lady in a Landscape

Chaucer’s Dream of Good
Women

Three Girls Dances

213

Constable
Constable

Corot

Corot

C. van Haanen
Sir J. E. Millais
L. Alma Tadema.
G. F. Watts

M. J. Bono .
Paris Bordone

A. W. G,

B. di Siena .
Schiavone
Tintoretto

G. Mason
Daubigny

T. Gainsborough

Sir E, Burne-Jones
Sir E, Burne-Jones

£157
£210

£6, 300

£262
#152
4745
£1,890
$304

| 4126

£126
B05
£110
£162
£441
£525
£50
£304

#249
£99

THE FOLLOWING ARE THE PRICES FETCHED)
FOR SOME OF LORD LEIGHTON’S SKETCHES
NOT MENTIONED IN THE CATALOGUE OF HIS WORKS

Head of a Girl : : ; 3 . £52!
Head of a Girl : 4 é : - £63}
A Bay Scene, Island of Rhodes : ; . £94.
A View of the Coast of Lindos ; : » £78 |
Study of a Man’s Head ; : : . £52
A View in Capri : : : ‘ . £63
Villa Malta, Rome . é : ; . 5
The Rocks of the Sirens, Capri : : “5
The Rocks of the Sirens, Capri ; P . 452
Vengeance Cove é é ; . - £15
Vittoria . : <a ees - £64
Head of an Italian Girl ; : : 3 ASG
A View in the Campagna : ; ; . £105
The Coast of A gina . : : : - £78
A Woody Hillside. 2 : : - £71

BOOKS CONSULTED
A Collection of Essays on Lord Leighton and his Works,
with Illustrated Catalogue of Leighton House.

Lord Leighton’s Discourses to the Royal Academy Students,
with Preface by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Kegan Paul, Trench,
Triibner, and Co.

Frederick Lord Leighton, P.R.A.: His Life and Work, by
Ernest Rhys. Published by George Bell and Son.

Leighton, by George C. Williamson, Litt.D. Bell’s Minia-
ture Series of Painters.

Mrs. Lang on Leighton, Art Annual, 1884. Virtue and Co.
Art Annual for 1895. Virtue and Co.

214

(THE CaPiraLs DENOTE NAMES

ACME AND SEPTIMUS, 61

AcT#®A, 61

Addresses, Leighton’s, 1 3s. 50

AFTER VESPERS, IOI

Aitchison, Mr., 19, 21, 23, 45, |
54, 59, 131, 151, 167, 168

Allingham, William, 29, 47, 179

AMARILLA, 104

ANNARELLA, 104

_ ANDROMEDA (clay model), 117

Ancient Italy, Art in, 139, 140,
141

ANTIGONE, THE, 95

Arab Hall, the, 168-171

Architecture, Leighton on, 145,
146

ARIADNE ABANDONED
THESEUS, 61

Arpad, 19

Art— |

The position of Art in the’
world, 135

The relation of Art to morals |
and religion, 136

The relation of Art to time,

BY

place, and racial circum-
stance, 137
Art in Ancient Italy, 139
Art in Modern Italy, 141
The Art of Spain, 142 |
The Art of France, 144
The Art of Germany, 146

INDEX

oF PicrurEs, SKETCHES, ETC.)

Art ees criticisms of the,
181, 182
Art Annual, 112

| Artist Volunteer Corps, Leigh-

ton and the, 130, 131, 164,172

| Assyrian Art, 138

ATALANTA, 95

Atheneum, criticisms of the,
28, 32, 36, 181, 182, 183

ATHLETE WRESTLING WITH A
PYTHON, THE, I14, 117

Barrington, Mrs. Russell, 174

— Letters to, 108, 156- 161,
162, 163

BATH OF PSYCHE, THE, 95

Bayliss, Sir Wyke, 56, 129, 130

Becker, Professor, 12

Bettino, 7

Bezzuoli, 7, 9, 10

BIANCA, 104, 105

Bible Gallery, Dalziel (illustra-
tions for), 50, 51

BIODINA, 104

Blanc, Charles (criticism
Leighton’s pictures), 58

Boehm, 171

of

| Book illustration, 50, 51

| Bourguereau, 19, 31, 185

BRACELET, THE, IOI

| Brock (monument to Leigh-
ton), 165

215

216 FREDERIC

Browning, E. B., 19, 28, 32,
45, 51

— medallion for the monument
to, 116

Browning, R., 19, 32, 45, 59

Brussels, Leighton at, 13

Burne-Jones, Sir E., 130

BurRToON, Captain RICHARD,
106, 171

BYSANTHINE WELL, A, 37, 186

Caldecott, 171

Capri, Leighton at, 38, 39

CAPRI—PAGANOs, 46

CapRI—SunNRISE, 39

CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE, 81,
90, 91, 118, 183, 185, 186

CATARINA, 104

Chaldean Art, 138

Chantrey Fund, 95, 115

Chesneau, M., on English Art,
aT

CHORAGUS (clay model), II7

CIMABUE (figure in mosaic), 113

CIMABUE FINDING GIOTTO, 12

CIMABUE’S MADONNA, 24-0,
58, 86, 176-81, 185

Ciseri, 7
CITY oF Tomsps, Ecypr
(sketch), 82

CLEOBULUS INSTRUCTING HIS
DAUGHTER CLEOBULINA, 99

CLYTEMNESTRA ON THE
BATTLEMENTS OF ARGOS,93

CLYTIE, 95, 96, 162, 174

Coast oF ASIA MINoR SEEN
FROM RHODES (sketch), 82

COCKERELL, Mrs, FREDERIC,
PorTRAIT OF, 108

Cockerell, S. Pepys, 37, 128,
152

LEIGHTON

COLERIDGE, LaDy, PORTRAIT
OF, 108

Colour, Leighton’s trials in
24, 25

ConTrRastT, A (an illustration),
51

CORINNA OF TANAGRA, 95

Cornelius, 11, 16

Cornhill Magazine, illustrations
for, 50, 51

Correggio, Leighton and, 1),
14, 25, 135

Counr Paris, 35

Costa, Signor, 19, 20, 24, 34,
38, 45, 122, 129, 155

Costa, SIGNOR, PORTRAIT
OF, 106

CuriID wiTtH Doves (fresco),
113

CYCLAMEN (sketch of a), 34

CyMon (clay model), 117

CYMON AND IPHIGENIA, 81,
89, 90, 183, 184

DDALUS AND Icarus, 87

Dalziel’s Bzd/e Gallery, illus-
trations for, 50, 51

DANTE IN CaPTiviry, 56

DAPHNEPHORIA, THE, 88, 89,
182, 185

— (clay model), 117

DAVID, 57, 102

Day Dreams, 81

Décamps, 31

Discourses,
133-49

Drapery, the importance of,
22.528

DREAM, A, 46, 47

DUEL BETWEEN TYBALT AND
ROMEO, 14

Leighton’s, 1 30,

INDEX

Duert, 48
Diirer, Albrecht, Leighton on,
147

Egypt, Leighton’s visit to, 63-

EGYPTIAN SLINGER, THE, |
70, 100,

ELIJAH IN THE WILDERNESS,
103, 186

ELISHA AND THE SHUNA-
MITE’S SON, 103

ELECTRA AT THE TOMB OF
AGAMEMNON, 92, 185

Etruscan Art, 139, 140

EUCHARIS, 49

FATIDICA, 95

FISHERMAN AND THE SYREN,
THE (THE MERMAID), 35

FLAMING JUNE, 102

Flemish School of Painting, 137

Fleury, Robert, 31

Florentine Academy, 9

France, the Art of, 144, 145

Frankfort, Leighton’s residence
there, II, 14

Frescoes, 109-14, 186

FRIGIDARIUM, THE, IOI

Gallait, 12

Gamba, Signor, 15

GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES,
THE, 91

Germany, Art in, 146-8

Géréme, 94.

GIACINTA, 38

Gibson, the sculptor, 19

Gilbert, statue of Icarus by,
171

Girls’ Heads, 104, 105, 106

|GREEK GIRLS

217

Giotto; 2524527) 13%

GOLDEN Hours, 57

Grant, Sir Francis, death of,
122

Greece, the Art of, 138, 139

PICKING UP
PEBBLES BY THE SEA, 99

GREEK GIRLS PLAYING AT
BALL, 99

Greville, Lady Charlotte, de-
sign for the tomb of, 116

GUTHRIE, Mrs. JAMES, Por-
TRAIT OF, 59

Hébert, 19

HELEN OF TROY, 57, 58, 81

HELIOS AND Ruopos, 88

HERCULES STRUGGLING WITH
DEATH FOR THE Bopy OF
ALCESTIS, 87, 183, 186

HIT, 101

Honpcson, Miss RuTH STEW-
ART, PORTRAIT OF, 108

Hofmann, 185

Holman Hunt, 36, 72, 179, 183

IDYLL, THE, 99

INDUSTRIAL ARTS OF PEACE,
THE, 109, III-13

INDUSTRIAL ARTS OF WAR,
THE, 109-11

Ingres, 31, 187

IPHIGENIA (clay model), 117

ITALIAN CROSSBOW MAN, AN,

49
Italy, painting in, 135
—, visits to, 128, 129, 155

Jamieson, Mrs., 32
JEALOUSY OF SIMETHEA THE
SORCERESS, 94

218 FREDERIC

JEWs’ QUARTER aT OLD Da-
MASCUS, THE, IOI

JEZEBEL AND AHAB, 49

JoacHIm, Miss Nina, Por-
TRAIT OF, 108

Joachim, the playing of, 152

Joachim, Madame, 153

JONATHAN’S TOKEN TO DaviD,
62, 185

Journal of Leighton, 63-78

JUGGLING GIRL, THE, Io1

Kemble, Mr. and Mrs., 45
King, the (when Prince of
Wales), 26, 165, 166, 175
Kyrle Society, Leighton and
the, 129, 149, 156, 157, 158,

159, 160

LACHRYM&, 95

LAING, Miss, PortTrair OF
(Lapy Nias), 26

La Nanna (ROMAN Lapy), 38

Lang, Mrs. Andrew (Art An-
nual Monograph on Leigh-
ton), I12

Last Watcu oF HERO, THE,

93
Leighton, Dr., 1, 2, 33557 SOs
TO, II, 43, 44
Leighton, Mrs., 4On ra
Leighton, Frederic, Lord—
Birth, 1
Education, 5, 6, TB ai
Student days, 8-16
At Brussels, 12, 17
In Paris, 13, 30, 31
In Rome, 17-26
Method of work, 21
First great picture, 12, 24-8
Sketches, 34

LEIGHTON

Leighton, Frederic, Lord—
In Algeria, 36, 37
In Orme Square, 43, 44, 45,
46
Discourses, addresses,
speeches, etc., 44, I 33-50
A.R.A., 54
R.A., 56, 79
Journal, 63-78
Classicism of, 79, 114, 1173
185
PoRTRAIT, by himself (for
the Uffizi Gallery), 107, 184
P.R.A., 119, 120-32
Influence over art education,
122,023
Last illness and death, 162~4
Monument to, 165
Leighton House, 24, 151, 167—

75

Leighton, Millais, and William
Morris, lecture by Sir W. B,
Richmond, 187

Leighton, Sir James, 1

LEMON TREE, STupy oF A;
37, 186

Lerry, 104, 105

LIEDER OHNE Worte, 46, 47

Little Fatima, 69

LITTLE Fatima, 104, 105

Lucas, Mrs. F., PORTRAIT
OF, 108

Lyndhurst, altarpieceat, 59, 109

Lyons, Lord, 19

Magazine of Art (article by
Mr. Spielmann), 22

MARTINEAU, JOHN, PorTRAIT
OF, 107

Mason, George, 109, 45, 52,
53, 172

i —-
INDEX

Matthews, Mrs., 4, 42, 53, 163,
164, 174

— letters to, 16, 48, 152, 154,
161

Meli, Signor, 5

MERMAID, THE (FISHERMAN
AND THE SYREN), 35

MIcHAEL ANGELO NURSING
HIS DyING SERVANT, 48

Millais, Sir J. E., 23, 25, 36,
50, 116, 124, 165, 179

Miiis, Miss MABEL, PorR-
TRAIT OF, 108

Mocatta, Mrs.,
OF, 108

Modern Italy, art in, 20, 141,
142

Morgan, Mr. de, 170

MoorisH GARDEN: A DREAM
OF GRANADA, IOI

MorRETTA, IO!

Mosaics, 113

MOTHER AND CHILD, 58

Music Lesson, THE, 98, 186

Music - ROOM, DECORATION
FOR A, 113

Mutter, Richard (criticisms),
83, 84, 185

PORTRAIT

NANNA, 104, 105

Nash, G. A., 4

Nash, Mr. and Mrs. A. J.;
10

NAUSICAA, 94

Nazarenes, the, II

NeaR BELLO SGUARDO
(sketch), 34

NEEDLESS ALARMS, 116

NERUCCIA, 105

Nite Womay, A, 105

NYMPH AND CHILD, A, 35

219

ODALISQUE, 47

‘Old Masters,” study of, 11,
25, 128, 129, 135, 137

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE, 57,
185

Orr, Mrs. Sutherland, 3, 6, 13,
20, 31, 39, 44, 163, 164, 174

Orr, Mrs., PoRTRAIT OF, 46,

107

Orr, Major Sutherland, design
for monument to, 116

OTHELLO AND DESDEMONA,

Overbeck, 11, 184 [13

PAINTER’S HONEYMOON, THE,

59

PAN PIPING UNDER THE
SHADE OF A FIG TREE, 35

PAOLO AND FRANCESCA, 46

Paris, Leighton’s residence in,
13

PASTORAL, THE, 61

PAVONIA, 38

PrERSEuS (clay model), 117

PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA,
81, 9I

PERSIAN PEDLAR, A, 17

Pfiihler, 11

PHCE:NICIANS BARTERING

WITH BRITONS, II4

PHRYNE AT ELEUSIS, 94

PISANO (figure in mosaic), 113

PLAGUE OF FLORENCE, THE
(cartoon), 14

POMEGRANATE Lucca, BAGNI
VILLA (sketch), 34

Power OF Music, THE, also
called TRIUMPH of MusICc,
THE, 31, 32, 33> 181

Powers, Hiram, verdict on
Leighton’s early work, 8

220 FREDERIC

Poynter, Sir E., 26, 165, 166

Pre-Raphaelites, the, 25, 28, 36

PRIMROSE, LADY SyBIL, Por-
TRAIT OF, 108

Prinsep, Val, 152

PSAMATHE, 94

Queen Victoria (buys Cia-
BUE), 28, 179

RECONCILIATION
MONTAGUES
CAPULETS, 31

Renaissance, Leighton on the,
142

RETURN OF PERSEPHONE, THE

OF
AND

THE
THE

QI

Richmond, Sir W. B., 187

RIZPAH, 104

Roman Lapy, A(LA Nanna),
8

RoMAN MOTHER, THE, 38

Romola, illustrations for, 50

Rosetta, William, 130

Rossetti, D. G., 29, 36, 47, 125,
179

Rossetti, William, 49, 181, 182

Royal Society of British Artists,
5

Ruereoes 104.

Ruskin, John, on Leighton, 13,
14, 29, 93, 100, 105, 176-9

Rustic Music, 48

ST. JEROME IN THE DEsERT,
102

Sr. Marx’s, 58

SALOME, 35

Sand, George, 19

SARTORIS, Miss May, Por-
TRAIT OF, 108

LEIGHTON

Sartoris, Mr. and Mrs. 18, 19

Schnorr, 11

Sculpture, 114-19

SEA ECHOEs, 48

SEA GAVE UP ITS DEAD, THE,
103, 104

SERAFINA, 104

Sevolini, 7, 9, 10

Sheffer, Ary, 31

SHUNAMITE’s Son, ELISHA
AND THE, 103

SISTERS, 48

SISTER’S Kiss, 98

SLUGGARD, THE, II5, 116, 117

SOLITUDE, THE, IOI

Spanish School of Painting, 137

Spain, the Art of, 142-4

Spectator, criticism of the, 28,
IOI, 181, 182, 183, 184

Speeches, Leighton’s, 149, 150,
160

Sizeranne, M. de la, on Leigh-
ton, 107, 184

Spielmann, Mr., 22, 181

SPIRIT OF THE SUMMIT, THE,
IOI

Staedlesche Institut, 12

STAR OF BETHLEHEM, THE,
48, 102, 181, 185

Steinle, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18,
184

STELLA, 38

Student Festival at Darmstadt,
15

SUMMER Moon, 100

SUMMER SLUMBER, 100

Sunny Hovrs, 38

SYRACUSAN BRIDE, 58, 86

TERESINA, 104
Thackeray, 19, 25, 45, 50

_

INDEX

Times, criticism of Leighton,
180, 181, 182, 183, 186

TRIuMPH OF MUSIC, THE,
also called POWER OF Music,
THE, 31, 32, 33, 181

Veit, 11

Velasquez, 25, 137, 143, 144

VENUS DISROBING FOR HER
BaTH, 60, 185

Veronese, Paul, 179

VESTAL, THE, 101

Victoria, Queen, Medal to com-
memorate Jubilee, 117

— (buys CIMABUE), 28, 179

Walker, John Hanson, 40, 41,
42, 46

— PORTRAIT AND STUDIES
OF, 41, 42, 107

221

WALKER, MRS.JOHN HANSON,
PORTRAIT OF, 42, 108
Watts on Leighton, 121,127,152
Watts, Portrait of Leighton, 171
WEAVING THE WREATH, IOI
WEDDED, 81 :
‘¢ Week in a French Country
House, a,” 19, 50
WHISPERS, 99
Wrpow’s PRAYER, THE, 58
Wiertz, 12
WINDING THE SKEIN, 98
WISE AND FOOLISH VIRGINS,
THE (fresco), 59, 109
Woolner, 36

YANITA, 105

Zanetti, 9
ZEYRA, 104

a a =